Seeds of Love
by Nightheart
Summary: AU. Persephonemyth based. Trowa, the sombre God of the Underworld, find himself unexpectedly smitten by a goldenhaired demigod on Mt Romafeller one whom he must have, even if it means stealing...
1. Chapter 1

An old man sat on the stone steps of the Temple of Dorothy, Goddess of War and Legends and Patron of Storytellers. His back stooped, his face withered like a raisin with age and time, and he had a grey beard splayed across his chest like the pelt of a sheep. Gathered in a circle around him were many children, street urchins grubby with dirt but not yet old enough to port carts of wares to the vendors at the market or leap the pressing pole for the olive press to make oil. There were some older people too, curious young men and women passing by and catching the intriguing opening lines to his tale. An old master at his craft, the storyteller knew the way to hook an audience and keep them in suspense, even with the tired old yarns that the temple paid him to tell to children as a way of educating them in the tales of the Gods.

"In this world before the time of the Gods was the time of the Daemons," he continued, after his opening lines had gotten their interest. "Fearsome creatures; made of all of the stuff of nightmares that feasted upon the blood and bones of our very ancestors."

Unbeknownst to him, a seemingly ordinary young man wearing a cloak had stopped to listen to the golden-tongued tale-spinner; but the cloaked young man was anything but ordinary. People seemed to flow around him, without ever noting his presence and when people did appear to notice him they gave a quick shiver and hurriedly moved on. If anyone had been able to look upon his face, they would have known that this seeming-young man had lived more than they could imagine. His eyes shone a fiery-green luminescence like a cat's eyes that had caught the light. He paused on his errand to listen; he had time before his task.

"The daemons at first contented themselves with roaming during the night when they were most comfortable, feasting upon the occasional sacrifice, and stealing to occasional baby from its crib when they were in want of a treat."

The children of the crowd's eyes widened in fear as the old man leaned forward to poke one of them, like a daemon testing one to see if he had had enough meat on him to eat. The young man cocked his head to one side.

"But one year the Daemons grew to understand that our people grew numerous, numerous enough to be a threat and they began to attack in earnest. They came out from every crag and hollow, from the fields and from the woods, from the swamps and from the mountains... they descended on the then-isolated villages of our ancestors and began to wipe them out. In desperation the ancient Priests each called upon the one they worshiped and sacrificed their own bodies, that their battle god might be born into human flesh..."

The young man closed his shaded green eyes, for all of the world looking nostalgic.

"And they banded together into a mighty, unstoppable force and after a hundred years of battle, defeated the Daemon's, casting them from the world and bringing rise to the time of the gods. During which time they divided up their offices amongst themselves, each taking upon themselves the realm and duties to which they were suited best."

The young man blinked, and then looked over into a side street, waiting.

"Hey! You!" a voice cried over at the side, the young man looked on dispassionately, watching a fight in the street commence over a piece of fruit. The two young street toughs, a boy and a girl tussled in the dirt for a minute or two as the storyteller wove on obliviously. The boy pulled out a short, tiny knife; no more than a shard of pointed glass with one end bound in leather cord and slashed it across the neck of the girl. He hurriedly grabbed up the fruit and pelted off into the shadows of the alleyway.

The green-eyed young man bent next to the form bleeding in the street. The pain-glazed eyes of the fruit-thief were the only ones that saw the face of the cloaked young man. The song and traffic of the busy street stilled as the world froze mid-ramble about them.

"Is it time then?" she gasped.

Trowa nodded.

"Damn," the fruit-thief muttered. "What a lousy way to die."

Trowa gently lifted up her soul. There was the sound of sighing wind, like a choir of whispers rising and falling and then… silence as time stood still for a moment. When the hustle and bustle of the mortal world re-commenced, the only sign of deaths passing was the body growing cold in the street.

In Romafeller, the home of the gods, the immortal Trickster peered about him. Trieze, the king of the gods, had assembled them all to celebrate the creation (one could not call it a birth since Une, the queen of the gods, had refused point blank to have much aught to do with the painful process) of his daughter and heir Mariemaia. The crowd was enormous since not only had every god and goddess been invited, but every demi-god, immortal, nature spirit, and elemental as well. The crowd was as varied as it was enormous. Duo could not remember a gathering this large since the dark days when they had all assembled together to overthrow the Primal Daemons who'd ravaged the world all those millenia ago. Duo himself had once been the God of Death for a village off the coast, he enjoyed his current role far more. A trickster could certainly have a great deal of fun...

Heero, one of his old comrades-in-arms, had decided upon the title and duties of God of Dreams. His realm was a world apart from the solid reality of the mortal realm and was made up of all of the things that could exist in a mortal imagination. Duo was unsurprised to note that, though it had been centuries since the fall of the Daemons, Heero was still as serious as if he expected to take up the mantle of battle-god once more. Duo, nominally his best friend, strolled over to heckle him about it.

"Heero, buddy!" Duo called, not missing the grimace that appeared on his old friend's face at his summons. "Haven't seen you in a while, how's things in the dream realm?"

"Dreamy," Heero replied flatly.

Heero's attention was elsewhere, and Duo wasn't long in figuring out where. Ah, there she was! Relena, Goddess of Peace and Healing. She looked as fresh and lovely as ever, and Heero was as taken with her as ever he had been. Theirs was a history that went back a few hundred years... When her brother, the sword-weilding God of Vengeance, Milliardo, had been fighting alongside them to defeat the Daemons who ravaged the mortal world, he had built a mighty fortress to protect his precious younger sister Relena. Heero had been badly wounded in combat and his comrade had invited him back to recuperate at his fortress. WHile recovering from his injuries there, Relena had tended to him. It was obvious that the two of them thought highly of each other, all they needed was a little nudge...

Who better than the Trixter to do it?

Ooooh, new handmaidens! Duo thought, momentarily distracted from his imminent crusade. The handmaidens that followed Lady Une, Goddess of War and Beauty, were all, of a rule, the loveliest of demi-goddesses. Duo was, in particular, taken with a statuesque petite young woman with closely-cropped black hair and eyes of a captivating cornflower blue. He was about to make his way over there to sneak past the formidable and forbidding regard of Lady Une to try his luck when he was intercepted by two more of his old war-comrades.

Quatre, God of Light and Love was a shining example of the two things he represented. His light blonde hair seemed to always have the effect of a permanent halo around him at all times, and he was so kind and good natured that he radiated good-feelings like a miniature sun. He was always cheerful, always polite, and his quiver always full of arrows to stimulate love in the heart of mortal and god alike.

His companion Trowa was a polar opposite of him, he was tall and lean, but unlike Quatre (who was the least warrior-like of all of the former War-Gods), Trowa still looked like he expected to wake up and fight a battle. The rest of the gods had dubbed him as the quiet one for he never said two words more than were necessary, and when he did speak his voice was toneless without the inflection of emotion. Duo had heard it said (well out of the God of the Underworlds hearing of course) that when Trowa had been Born by priest that the preist had forgotten to include human emotions for Trowa was unmoved by even the greatest tragedies. On this occasion he stood among the crowd but was un touched by it, even the gods of Romafeller would not walk into his shadow so he was surrounded (with the exception of Quatre) by a circle of clear space in the midst of a roiling party. Trowa was solemn and somber as ever; like he was attending his own funeral. Perhaps that should not be all that surprising since he was after all, the God of the Underworld. Duo went down to visit the Underworld one time on invitation and hadn't found it in him to go back. The place was, in a word, gloomy. There was this hanging aura of murk about the place that never seemed to dissipate; and its master was just as somber as the realm he lived in. Duo had never once seen him smile in all of the millennia he had known him.

While Quatre chatted with Duo, the Trickster's attention was caught by the shining golden arrows in the quiver on the God of Light and Love's back. A plan slowly began to form in the tricksters mind. If he could steal a few of those arrows...

He looked over at where the Goddess of Peace and Healing was being guarded jealously by her elder brother and then over at Heero who watched her surruptiously out of the corner of his eye. It could work.

Treize momentarily called for every being's attendance as he made the official presentation of his daughter and heir and Duo saw his chance. In an eye blink he had discretely swiped two of Quatre's love arrows from his quiver while everyone else was watching the presentation of little baby Mariemaia. Quatre would understand, it was all in a good cause. Besides, those mortals needed something to make stories about, and things had been just a little too quiet recently in Romafeller.

He purloined the articles into his bottomless wallet with none the wiser and waited for his opportunity. It had to be when the two of them were alone together. The way the arrows worked was that the person struck by the point would fall in love with the very next person they saw (whether of the same or opposite gender didn't matter). Firing one of those off in a crowd this size could be a disaster. Still, Duo could be patient when the moment suited him, he had plenty of time to trick them both into a private meeting and still have time to come back for refreshments. Oh yeh!

The gift line for Mariemaia's presentation was a long one, all twelve of Lady Une's handmaidens waited to accept the gifts for Mariemaia and put them in the growing pile off to the side. Lady Une divided her attention between overseeing her handmaidens and watching the baby. Duo already had his ready; a bag of tricks from the Trickster. Heero was giving her sweet and pleasant dreams for her lifetime, Quatre was giving her very own sun, Wufei God of (you guessed it) Justice was giving her a little Scale of Truth to play with. Sally, Goddess of Patience, was giving her the very thing for which she was worshipped. Relena had already given Mariemaia her gift, the Gift of inner Peace. Milliardo, god of Vengeance... well, his wife had insisted upon giving her a present from both of them because she'd shot down his idea of giving her an executioners swift sword.

Duo presented his gift with all due aplomb directly to the baby, because Lady Une was frowning at him for eying her precious handmaidens. Damn, there went that idea. He left the baby to play with it while he went to go and set up the little meeting between his two friends. He reached for his never ending wallet to check to make certain that his stolen arrows were there when he noted with dismay that his wallet was empty.

I could have swore that I just... 

Duo hurriedly looked about him. Nada. By chance he glanced back over at the line and the baby to discover to his dismay that he'd put the arrows into the wrong bag, and now the baby was using the little love arrows as a divine baby toy.

Uh-oh, he thought. He watched Trowa, God of the Underworld, walk up to the cradle where the bright little tot played to present his gift. The little baby shook the arrow at Trowa as Trowa gave his present to a waiting handmaiden.

Duo watched, torn between delight and dismay, as little baby Mariemaia cheerfully poked the God of the Underworld with the point of the love arrow. The point dissipated into a puff of pink smoke on contact and Trowa locked eyes with Lady Une's favorite handmaiden.

Awwww, Duo thought, watching a sudden soft look of besotted fascination enter the eyes of a man that Duo had never seen wear a facial expression before.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow, Duo thought, pleased with himself even if it had been an accident.

The handmaiden took his present with a small bow and turned to leave. Trowa started to follow after her, dazed as if in a trance, when he was met by the frowning visage of Lady Une dual-natured Protector of Women. She was terribly jealous and protective of her handmaidens, no man be he god or mortal got close to them for fear of her wrath. Midii Une was not only Lady Une's favorite handmaiden, but her younger half-cousin as well.

Uhboy... Duo thought, reconsidering. There was no way in the world Une would consent to give away her favorite handmaiden; even to a God she counted as a friend.

I hope it wears off quickly, for his sake, Duo thought pityingly. He'd just leave well enough alone for now.

The Underworld was dark and gloomy at even the best of times with it's all-pervading fog-cover lit by a dim hazy light that didn't come from any perceivable direction and yet still somehow managed to cast creepy flickering shadows everywhere, and lastly the unshakable feeling of depression that came off from the souls of the dead flickering in and out throughout the realm. The underworld was dismal, murky and depressing, like a miserable dream you couldn't wake up from; reflecting much of the character of its ruler.

A warrior himself, the underworld was suitable to the feeling that a warrior lived with; that one was always on the edge of oblivion. That was the way he was most accustomed to feeling for being a harvester of souls didn't exactly lend itself to a cheery disposition; much like the realm he ruled, Trowa, was often called grim, serious, even harsh. He exuded a gravity of sobriety that many found to be intimidating, and his expressionless face and forbidding demeanor made him quite unapproachable. Plus there was the obvious concern; who wanted to offend the god of the dead?

Due to the solitary nature of its ruler and the general feeling of melancholy the Underworld received few visitors (aside of the souls of the dead that is). Trowa looked about him as if seeing his realm for the first time; creeping shadows, chill mist, and the walking souls floating in a peaceful stream toward the shadowed gate… He shook his head. As a god he required neither food nor sleep, so he generally bothered with neither. Unlike many of the other gods who built themselves enormous palaces in their own realms to reflect their powers and personalities Trowa had not felt the need to build any kind of abode since he never had anyone to impress and building one to house only himself would be pointless.

There was only one structure in all of the Underworld… The Whisper Gallery. Much like in the realm of dreams, the souls of the dead brought with them their own afterlife. When Trowa (and the Shadowed Ones he commanded) released a mortal soul from its body it first journeyed to the Shadowed Gate; grey colorless souls walked in a steady stream of humanity to the gate and then disappeared through it. For every soul that entered the gate a globe of colored light, floating and glowing, appeared in its own little niche in a chamber called the Whisper Gallery. Trowa did not know what worlds existed inside of those globes, the only thing he heard were the whispers; millions of voices echoing in song. Trowa found it comforting, but the few gods he had showed his comfortable place to had been, for lack of a better phrase, creeped out. They had left shortly there-after. Even Quatre, his best friend, tendered invitations for Trowa to come and visit him in his own realm rather than visit the underworld.

Trowa looked about him, he didn't see any problems with his realm and couldn't quite understand why none of the other gods seemed to find it comfortable; to his mind it was very peaceful.

Perhaps she'd like something more comfortable to her, he thought.

The God of the Underworld summoned Afiro, one of his spirit servants. An elemental made of the darkness, Afiro was a formless being of shadow that existed wherever darkness could be found who served as Trowa's eyes and ears among the shadows of the human realm. The glinting reflection of the murky ambient glow reflected off from two obsidian eyes at the apex of the drifting blot of darkness at Trowa's side.

"Afiro," he commanded. "Build a palace suitable to the queen of the underworld."

He pointed, envisioned the image of his desired abode in his mind, and worked his Will upon his realm.

The being gave no sign of surprise but instead set about to do its masters bidding. On a hill overlooking the river of souls a great dark cloud condensed and began to twist and move. Within the hour it dissipated leaving behind a standing structure, a massive edifice of blackest night like a shadow made solid.

Trowa flowed over to inspect it. He'd had a vague idea of what he'd wanted but had left the particulars up to the Shadowed One he'd commanded; after all it had lived here since its creation so it would likely have a pretty clear notion of what an estate in the Underworld should look like.

The front gate was of blackened steel spikes bound upright by iron figures of dead warriors, the gate in turn were also guarded by four immense stone gargoyles to either side that looked out at him with shining black eyes. He was recognized as the castles master but anyone who attempted entry without his permission would be treated to their heavy solid stone bulks animating themselves and blocking the way in by forcible means if necessary. The front courtyard was bare, scorched earth but for a fountain of stone carved depicting a knot of desperate souls who had died of thirst weaving about each other reaching greedily for drink. Afiro had a twisted sense of humor, Trowa noted dourly. Black shining shadow-stuff, like ink, poured from the top into the pool below instead of water.

The front was a story-high pointed archway of stone with bas-relief carvings of souls bearing the load of the arch on their shoulders, the doors were ebony with blackened iron metal panels depicting scenes from some of the most costly battles in mortal history. What looked from the outside to be the main hall was three stories high with the two top levels supported by long slender stone pillars connected by stone arches. Inside the niches of the archways were more elongated stone gargoyles that posed there to guard the building from all sides, to be animated at his command. Crowning the entire edifice was a massive dome of etched obsidian glass in the shapes of interlocking triangles with corresponding downward triangles held in place by blackened steel. To the back of the main hall, two smaller wings swept out to either side, it was likely that there was a garden in the center behind the main hall. Impressive.

The ebony doors opened into a long, dark foyer lined on both sides by black obsidian gargoyles resting on black marble pillars, their eyes gleaming comfortingly in the gloom to assure that any traveler to his realm would be well guarded. The entry hall led directly to the main hall; three stories high with the glass dome at the top, black stone pillars were carved to present the image of a twisting spiral of souls reaching upwards, the ribs were interlocked arms and shoulders to bear the weight of the ceiling. The floor was of black marble polished to a glassy finish, the room lit by the ambient glow of the mist that pervaded the Underworld.

Satisfied, he flowed over to inspect the guest quarters for his intended guest. A sumptuous suite of seven rooms; the bedroom had plush woven carpets of sable and charcoal-grey over the polished black floors so that he feet wouldn't become cold. A wide window to one wall with a balcony sporting two guardian gargoyles on pillars overlooked the inner garden; the bed had black silk sheets and comforters with black velvet curtains mounted on the ebony headboard and frame, the bathing chamber with an onyx tub, black fittings and silver fixtures. The office, sitting room, receiving room, library, and leisure room were outfitted similarly.

Good. She'll be very comfortable here, he thought, pleased.

Something had inspired him to go to efforts that he had never before seen the need to bother with. Ever since the gathering in Romafeller, when he had locked eyes with that beauteous creature of the light ((a.n. if anybody has read the manga "Wallflower"… ;-D )) he could think of nothing else. Ever since he had seen her, Trowa had been plagued by strange feelings; his chest felt tight and he was constantly restless. He watched a mirror of obsidian constantly that relayed the scene he had sent his pet raven to watch over; that scene being Midii. He'd memorized her every feature; long thick hair fell in waves down her back in all the colors of gold that existed in nature from the pale gold of morning sunlight to the rich gold of ripened wheat to the burnished gold of clovers honey. Her eyes were the most enchanting blue, rivaling the clearest of afternoon skies. Her lithe, willowy form was as graceful as a leaping gazelle as she whirled about in the gardens dancing to music only she could hear. Her innocent, beautiful face held him captivated. In a life that was filled with misery and sadness and unescapable gloom she was the one point of color and brightness. Seeing her image brought to him by one of his minions wasn't enough. He wanted; _needed_ to see her personally. It had been three days and he was in agony!

Lady Une would never consent to give up her most precious and favorite of handmaidens, so out of desperation Trowa had made this plan. In his observance of her Trowa had noticed that Middi loved nothing more than to dance in the sunlit gardens of the palace at Romafeller, she did this every afternoon. He would take his Ravens chariot to Romafeller, lure her to the edge of Une's protected gardens and steal her away for himself. Every God was supreme within his or her own realm; even Treize, the king of the gods could not follow down into the Underworld if Trowa did not wish it. Once he had the maiden here, there would be no way to force Trowa into giving her up. He loved her so fiercely he could not abide the thought of giving her up. Once she was there she would eventually learn to be happy in her new home. He just knew she'd be happy once she saw how much he loved her.

Midii loved being outdoors, she loved being out in the sun where everything was fresh and golden and warm; not surprising, her mother had been a nature spirit and her father (lady Une's half cousin) had been a now-forgotten forest god. Midii liked to collect the colorful flowers that grew in the gardens and in the meadows nearby, her one talent was that they never faded after she touched them. She stayed away from Treize's precious roses, but all of the other flowers in the garden were fair game. There in that garden she was safe from all harm and no-one might enter unless they were invited in. Midii selected her bounty with care as she tilted her face up and closed her eyes to love the sun in tribute to a perfect day, completely unaware that she had a shadowy observer watching her nearby.

It had been a week from the time of Mariemaia's naming ceremony and matters had settled down appreciably from the uproar during the festival day. All of the different gods had departed to their realms once more and the palace was once again empty but for the lord and lady of Romafeller, the servants and Treize's highly trained warrior-heroes, and Midii's fellow handmaidens. Midii had been left to Lady Une by her father, and thus the palace at Romafeller was the only place she'd ever known; Lady Une rarely traveled the mortal realms and if she did she went alone. Midii had never once seen the outside of the palace walls; she heard somewhere that it had been her mothers request that she should be kept close because she was weak in power. Still, she savored the memories of seeing and meeting so many different people for the first time in her life. She'd even met the reclusive God of the Underworld.

And speaking of the underworld… she thought to herself.

Trowa, the lord of the underworld, had been at that party. She supposed he couldn't help it, but he'd made quite an impression on her; he was so… mysterious. Midii, usually shy around strangers, had found herself wishing that Lady Une had let her talk to him. He hadn't spoken much but when she'd looked up into his face he'd had the most beautiful green eyes, like the leaves of a forest when the golden sunlight shone through them. On one hand she'd been intrigued by him, but on the other hand she'd found him very, very intimidating. It was like he carried a chill wind with him wherever he went; she'd even noticed that many of the greater gods themselves gave him a wide berth! Somehow she found that very… sad.

I wonder if he ever gets lonely there, she thought, a little wistfully. She knew what it was like to feel trapped inside. She never got to go anywhere or meet anyone new, the other handmaidens tended to avoid her because she was… lesser. The other handmaidens all had at least one of the greater gods in their lineage but Midiis parents were only two obscure deity-spirits worshipped by a very small cult of fanatics. The gods all drew power and might from their worshippers, the more widespread the worship, the more powerful the god was. The greater gods had all once been the patron battle gods of city-states in the time of the Deamons. Midii didn't even have a fraction of the power displayed by any of the other handmaidens so she wasn't allowed to go anywhere because she didn't have to power to defend herself if something should happen to her. It got lonely most times, but she was content enough; she had a beautiful garden to gather flowers from, the sunlight was warm and the days were always beautiful. She could play her pipes and dance to her hearts content. What more could a handmaiden ask for?

A group of wind elementals bore a cheerful song from faraway and Midii started to bend and sway in a dance; her long golden hair flirting in the breeze as she twirled and her face lit with delight. She was so absorbed in her carefree dance that she forgot to pay attention to where she was, and strayed over to the boundary of the garden.

She was surprised into a sudden stop when a shadow fell over her face. She opened her eyes and looked up into the empty gaze of Trowa, God of the Underworld. The great beast he rode was as black as midnight, its dark coat glossy its eyes like two chips of obsidian peering it her with uncanny intelligence. Midii startled in fright and backed away a bit, the horse followed her. The God of the Underworld himself was a frightful majesty. He was tall, and lean, as many of the ancient battle-gods were. His molded warrior's breastplate of black with elaborate silver chasings was shrouded by the cloak of shadows he wore that fell in folds about him; the cowl hid his face until a stray breeze lifted it away and Midii stared up into the grim visage of death. His face, while handsome in a somber way, was utterly devoid of all traces of emotion. Oddly, when he locked eyes with _her_ his incredible, emotionless forest-green eyes seemed to soften almost imperceptibly.

She would have been curious about what brought the notorious hermit to visit so soon after the party held there, but some instinct from deep within her was telling her that something wasn't right. Afraid, but uncertain why she was afraid; Midii listened to her intuition and turned away to retreat to the safety of the gardens away from the shadow of this intimidating stranger. Suddenly, in a smooth movement as quick as a viper striking, he reached for her. Midii found herself caught about the waist in arms that were as strong and implacable as the mountains themselves and lifted up onto the horse. The beast snorted once restively and the young handmaiden nearly fainted to note that the beast had snorted out a blue flame from his nostrils. At last, she gathered enough of the wits that had been scattered by surprise and panic to scream. Trowa quickly clamped a hand over her mouth and her shriek cut off. She began to thrash about in resistance, trying to free herself but railing agaist the hardened warrior proved futile, nevertheless she fought on. Though she struggled and screamed and kicked, her captor held her fast in an iron grip. Out of the corner of her eye Midii saw the other handmaidens rushing across the garden towards to come to her aid; she struggled in a panic to reach them but the arms that held her secure to her perch on the massive dark horse were like implacable steel bands.

With a rumbling, cracking sound a hole opened up in the ground before them and the horse leapt into it, plunging them both into inky darkness. They landed hard on some kind of stone but it was too dark for Midii to see anything at all. The only lights were from the sparks that shot from the hooves of the massive beast beneath her as they tore through the underground passage. The only things she could feel was the hard breastplate Trowa wore digging into her back and the terrible shrieking wind of their passing whipping her hair into her face and tearing at her clothes. She was too afraid to be left blinded and alone in the dark to struggle against her kidnapper anymore, too afraid of the speed at which the horse moved, too afraid of the pain she would feel if she were to fall from its back so she sat there in his arms trembling as the nightmare journey continued. Her heart was seized in fear, hammering madly against her ribs like the panicked beating of a trapped birds wings. At last the pitch darkness of the tunnel opened into a portal of murky dim light; the underworld spread out before her.

The Underworld was much like a miserable dream that one couldn't wake up from, full of creeping mists and slithering shadows. A glowing river of floating souls flowed slowly up to a massive portal of bone and obsidian. Midii turned her face into the shoulder of her kidnapper, unable to bear the sight of such despair. The hoofbeats of deaths steed at last slowed outside of a structure of immense proportions; the frilled curvature of the busy carvings that decorated the arches and pillars and niches of stone inhabited by the massive guardian stone gargoyles seemed somehow sinister in the sickly light refracting off the fog. Shadows swept and glided about, pouring in and out of the intricate stonework. Midii shuddered in horror. Unaware of her discomfort the horse slowed to a stop in the courtyard in front of the obsidian palace and Trowa dismounted, pulling her down after him.

There's no-where I can run, she thought in panic as she looked up into the face of the predator who had taken her from all she had ever known and dragged her into a world of such melancholy. When she looked into his face it was like it had been carved from pale marble, there was no mercy, no compassion in his gaze; just the empty souled visage of a warrior-born.

"Wh-why have you taken me here?" she asked quaveringly. She disliked the tremor in her voice, but she knew perfectly well that she was completely at his non-existent mercy.

Trowa was silent, tugging on her arm a little to lead her inside the massive stone edifice. The interior was every bit as gloomy and intimidating as the exterior had been. Like its master, the castle in the underworld was dark, cold, and forbidding. The gargoyles glaring at her from either side gave her the shivers, a feeling that only increased as Midii followed meekly behind him while he led her to a long dining room just off the main Hall. The main Hall had been… frightening; a cavernous room supported by sinister pillars with the most frightful depictions of starved souls bemoaning their fates that she had ever witnessed, damned to support an enormous dome of blackest obsidian. The floor had been cold and the air echoingly empty. The fact that they seemed to be the only two living denizens within that colossal structure made it feel even more empty and daunting. Trowa gestured her to be seated at the long, long table and with a bare signal, the shadows flinched and the table was instantly set with elaborate arrays of food.

"I hope you like it here," he said at last. His voice was pleasant, mellow and quiet; but utterly without tone or emotion. Midii studied him fearfully from across the room.

"Please, eat," he invited. His words sounded more like a command but Midii knew that those who tasted of the fruit of the dead could never return to the realm of the living again.

"There's no need for you to be afraid," he said.

He kidnaps me from my home, she thought to herself. Drags me down into the underworld against my will, and now he wants to tell me that I don't need to be afraid? with an edge of hysteria to the tone of her thoughts she forced herself to be seated.

"I hope you like it here," he said again. "I made all of this just for you so if there's anything you need to make yourself more comfortable please don't hesitate to ask me. I will send one of the Shadowed Ones to be your servant."

Midii tried to hide her puzzlement. He had kidnapped her away from her home in the sunlight to his gloomy doom-castle in the world beneath and now he was setting servants to attend to her?

"I-I don't understand," she said. "What do you want with me?"

"I only want you to be happy here," he replied.

"Happy?" she demanded, the terror and uncertainty of her situation catching up with her and bringing out her rare stubborn streak.

"Yes-" he started. She cut him off.

"You take me away from the sunlight, from my gardens, from my _home_ and you say you only want me to be happy!"

Trowa regarded her with silent perplexity as she rose suddenly from the table.

"How can I possibly be happy in a place like this, there are none of the things that I love here! No sunlight, no joy, no life! I hate it already!"

With that she fled the room, determined to find a place in this awful land that had some shred of comfort. Midii felt like she was the only spot of life and color in this entire dismal kingdom. She dashed through the complex of first level rooms, tear blinded and unheeding of her direction, so long as it led her away from that terrible man who had brought her to this abode of misery. She stumbled upon an inner garden, if indeed you could call a place lined with wrought iron in the shape of pointed spikes with deadly nightshade twined round it a garden. It was every bit at dead and cold as the rest of this place. Midii threw herself down on the ground in front of a marble bench and wept. She was angry at her kidnapper for doing this to her with no cause, and very very frightened. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she cried herself out. Once she could cry no more she simply sat there limply, exhausted.

She brought her head up when her body detected a chill drop in temperature. The Lord of the Underworld knelt silently next to her, one cool hand tilted her chin up while the other softly caressed her face, wiping away the trails of tears down her cheeks.

"Why do you cry?" he asked curiously, seeming to be fascinated by the bitter drops seeping from her eyes.

"I can't help it," she said. "Don't you ever cry?"

"I have no tears," he said blankly. "I have seen mortals cry many times, it is common in my occupation."

The Lord of death and all of its minions, yes, she could see very well why he would be a cause of grief to many. Was he around pain and misery so much that he could not tolerate seeing anyone else happy? Had he seen her happy and kidnapped her just so that he could make her miserable? Oh, but that didn't make any sense, he had expressly said that he wanted her to be happy there.

If he knew anything about me he'd know that he couldn't have designed a place better suited to making me unhappy, she thought darkly.

"People cry when they are sad," Trowa noted. "Does that mean you are sad?"

"Yes!" she exploded at him, her exasperation suddenly igniting her temper. Her weeping had apparently not drained her of as much of her energy as she had at first thought. "Yes, I'm very sad! And whose fault do you think that is!"

He listened to her words solemnly and paused to reflect on them.

"I see," he said.

"Take me home," she demanded. "I don't belong here. Take me back to the sunlit world."

"I will not," he said, firmly. "I will give you anything to make you happy _here_, in this realm. You may ask anything else of me, but not that. You may ask me for all the wonders of creation, the wealth of the tombs of long-forgotten kings, the plunder of lost civilizations, all the treasures of the earth can be yours but the one thing I will not do is let you leave me."

Trowa gave a negligent gesture and swept his long cloak aside; there in a pile at her feet lay the rarest of gems and metals. Her clothing, a plain white stola of fine linen, morphed into an exquisite gown of finest raw silk in darkest black, with panels of cloth-of-electrum peeking between the sumptuous folds and beads of onyx trimming the edges three inches thick. Midii saw her reflection in a nearby garden-mirror; her hair was coifed into a golden crown on her head with strings of onyx beads draped in. A crown of stars adorned her brow.

She had never even touched as fine a gown as this even though she was the handmaiden to the queen of the gods and for a moment Midii was flattered at the extravagance but then the thought occurred to her that such a thing would be easy for him to do, and easy things had no meaning. Did he think that he could just drape her with jewels as a substitute for all that he had taken from her? Her stubborn streak came back out.

"Your attempts to salve the misery you've caused in me are meaningless since you are the one who caused them. I will not be bought," she raised her chin determinedly to face him, to show him that she was unafraid. "You could give me all the wealth in all of creation and it wouldn't mean anything."

"Come, I will show you to your quarters," he said instead. He lifted her gently to her feet, her gown whispering and sliding about her. A cloud of darkness appeared suddenly beneath her feet, its surface surprisingly firm, that lifted the two of them up to a nearby balcony.

"Not the usual method of entry I'll grant," Trowa said with a ghost of a smile. "But it is quicker." Midii scowled stubbornly at him in return.

"Save your meager attempts at charm," she growled. "I don't like you."

"I don't blame you," he replied candidly. "Hope springs eternal however, and I have an eternity to hope."

With that last shot he disappeared in a whirl of midnight fabric.

Midii threw herself down on the bed once more, startled by a fresh spate of tears at this pronouncement of her fate. She was truly sentenced to this terrible realm for all of eternity! Never to feel the touch of wind on her cheek, nor feel the warmth of the sunlight kissing her closed lids again. She'd never forgive him for this! Midii wept until she fell asleep.

Authors Notes:

I know, I know, all of you Trowa and Quatre fans are probably apoplectic in your chairs right now gasping in horror. Relax. Try it. You just might find that you _like_ green eggs and ham. If you made it this far and didn't click out, I'm happy; that means I did a good job holding your attention. You might take this opportunity to leave a little note for me (if you want to bawl me out about tricking you, that's okay, I'm sure it came as quite a shock) tee hee, I have to have a little fun somehow!

Please read the next chapter too. As always, I hope you enjoyed.


	2. Chapter 2

Trowa sighed a little at the recent exchange with the one whom he had hoped to make his bride and queen. It had not went well, but then, he really hadn't expected that it would. He had known very well that she was going to be angry with him for stealing her away; he had been so wrapped up in the need to have her near him that he had overlooked how he was going to soothe her into returning his affections. Bad strategy from one who was so accustomed to using his cool intellect to think things through thoroughly before embarking on a plan of action. It was most uncharacteristic of him, but so was the entire situation. Trowa had to admit that he knew precious little on how to win a lady's affection; she had completely shot down his first nebulous notion by stating that any rare gift or treasure he offered would not buy her heart.

He summoned her image into a nearby mirror and saw that she was sleeping, the silver-white luminance of moonlight turned her pale complexion into the finest pale alabaster and caught the droplets of tears on her golden eyelashes. She had cried herself to sleep then. This was not an auspicious start.

Interrupting his reflections appeared a globe of yellowy-pink light in a nearby table which coalleced into a card, an invitation to be precise. His best friend, Quatre the God of Light and Love, had sent him an invitation to visit him. Perfect! If anyone one would know how to win over the heart of a reluctant maiden it would be the god in charge of such things. He summoned his steed and made his way to the Divine Realms once more.

"… Just don't believe you did this!" Quatre said for the seventh time since Trowa had shown himself into his friends receiving room. His fixation on Trowa's kidnapping of the girl was beginning to grow tiresome. Certainly he had taken Midii to his abode against her will, but there hadn't been many options open to him; Une would never release her and Midii would not have come to the Underworld on her own.

"I did, and what's done is done," Trowa replied tonelessly. "It matters not how upset the king and queen of Romafeller are; I love her and I will not give her up."

"Trowa… I'm happy that you've found someone at last who makes you feel joy, but… Look, kidnapping her away from Romafeller is not the way to court her. Not to mention the fact that Lady Une is more pissed off than I have ever seen her, and considering the warrioress aspect she wore back in the days of the Daemon Wars, that's really saying something."

"Protector of Women and Goddess of Nature, Lady Une!" a nearby attendant suddenly proclaimed with his eyes widened in panic.

Into the room stormed the coldly enraged Queen of the Gods, her clothing no longer the soft silk and satins in all the colors of spring she normally wore but the leather and metal plate of the Warrioress. The winds whipped around her, and the earth gave a small tremble with each step she took, her aspect was that of the dangerous side of Nature in all of its fury and grandeur.

Trowa inclined his head coolly in acknowledgement of the Queen; Lady Une narrowed her eyes at him and prepared a lash of wind.

"I would not do that if I were you," Trowa replied with all of the calm, level-headedness he was well known for. "You'll wreck Quatre's house for one and a guest should be polite to his host."

"My handmaiden!" Une snapped, dissipating the wind. "You will return her to me at once!"

"I will not," Trowa replied. "But you needn't fear for her, I will take very good care of her I promise."

"You dare to disobey me!" Une hissed, partly in surprise and partly in fury.

"I answer to no-one. I am Lord of Death's Realm. My affairs are my own."

It was not often at all that anyone could get the upper hand with Lady Une, she could be quite mild and gentle most times but she had a streak of the battle-goddess she once was, the commander of hundreds of soldiers and the defeater of a thousand Daemons in a single battle. She was no-one to be trifled with. However, Trowa knew very well that he did indeed have the upper hand in this battle, for he was quite correct in his assessment; he was the God of the Dead and he was supreme within his bailiwick. Une could do nothing to coerce him into obedience for his will was a strong as hers was and his power as great in its own way.

"You are the God of the Dead and the ruler of the Underworld," she acknowledged. "But I am the Queen of all of the gods of Romafeller, furthermore, I hold sway over all of the forces of nature in the mortal realms; if my handmaiden is not returned to me I will withhold my bounty from earths children. Not only shall there grow no food to feed the mortals but I shall unleash my full might upon the land that it shall turn into a desolate wasteland wracked by storms, ripped apart by earthquakes and eruptions and flooded by torrential waters."

She paused to let her pronouncement sink in, observing the God of the Underworld as he reflected upon the ramifications of her words.

"I see. I will be very busy in the future then," Trowa replied coolly.

"Lady Une, you mustn't!" Quatre protested. "I love the mortals, please don't leave them to die I beg you!"

"You should listen to Quatre," Trowa pointed out. "It was the mortals who gave us birth, and it is the mortals that give us our power. If you kill them all, where will that leave you?"

Lady Une trembled with rage for a moment, but had to concede that his observation was correct. The Gods protected and provided for the mortals of that realm and they in turn thanked them by paying them worship and granting them the power to fulfill their work. It was a symbiotic relationship and if you removed one side from the equation the other side would soon follow it. If she allowed the mortals to die, then her power would drain away and she and possibly the other gods would fade to nothing. She could do nothing to him for each God was supreme within its own demesne, she had no choice but to cede the battle. Unless… Lady Une got an idea.

"Hear me," she said, her voice ringing in tones of command. "I will have my handmaiden back."

"You cannot challenge me Lady," he said. "For to do so you would have to enter my realm and once you do even a god cannot leave it without my permission, leaving you solely at my mercy."

"I will not enter your realm, and neither will anyone else," she replied. "If my handmaiden is not returned to me swiftly I, Goddess of Nature, will make every mortal stop aging. Not a man, woman nor child will die and your realm will fade nothing. You will become powerless; for who will worship the god of the underworld when they no longer need to fear dying? Think on it well Lord of Deaths Realm."

With a final tremble of the earth and a roll of thunder, Lady Une disappeared.

Trowa stared at the spot where she had stood a moment before, musing for a time, and then he abruptly turned his head to face his friend.

"So," he said quietly. "About getting Midii to fall in love with me…"

Quatre merely stared.

Midii lifted her head from the elaborate silk pillow, she felt stuffed and her eyes felt itchy and dry from weeping. She looked around her as the black velvet curtains swept back seemingly by themselves, moved by the immaterial hands of Trowa's invisible servants. The room was elegant in a dark sort of way; black marble flooring polished to a glassy finish combined with glossy dark woods and sumptuous drapery gave the room a feeling of desolate comfort. The doors to the massive wardrobe opened to reveal rack upon rack of silks and satins and velvets, even samite, in all of the colors of midnight. Simple stola's, gowns, robes, even tunics and trousers made of the finest materials, cut to fit her body perfectly were arrayed before her. They were matched by rows of shoes, slippers and boots, bejeweled with glittering beads of jet winking against their matching black backgrounds and diamonds cut to sparkle as the stars against the night sky.

One of the shadowed ones selected a dress for her, a stola of layer upon layer of shimmering black silk thin as the mist, each layer cut to tie in and accentuate the one beneath it so that it draped about her like a drifting shadow. The Shadowed Ones removed her rumpled dress that she had slept in and pulled the stole about her body and was fastened at each of her shoulders by brooches of the rare black diamonds with strings of fringe as long as her arms winking in and out of the folds of the layers of the slitted sleeves that fell from her shoulders to the ground like a black waterfall and fluttered delicately when she moved. The cords that crisscrossed under her breasts were of black diamonds, and the slippers that the Shadowed Ones chose to accompany the clothes were obviously designed to match. Was the God of the Underworld a closet fashion-horse? Midii shook her head; no way did that dismal man have any hobbies; he was too boring for them.

Curiosity moved her to explore the remaining rooms nearby (no way was she going back out into that disturbing Hall again, it had given her nightmare the previous eveing!). Her clothes trailed out behind her as she moved about. The door nearest the wardrobe led to a bathroom; it held a small black basin on a pedestal with a hole in the bottom and a silver spout coming out from the wall, when she touched the silver spigot, hot water poured out! The water cut off at another touch, amazing. She saw her reflection in the mirror; the black of the dress made her skin look as pale as the moon (or perhaps it was a trick of the odd lighting). To the far side of the room, underneath a large black domed window, a sizable bath was sunk into the floor. Carved of the same polished black stone with silver fixtures that all of the rest of bathroom sported the bath could easily hold her form lying down and if she stretched her hands out to either side neither of them would touch the sides; more like a small heated lake than a bath really. The was an ebony vanity with a large mirror in a silver frame also in the same room with a brush and comb set of black and silver waiting nearby and a silver shelf holding all manner of little vials, and bottles and boxes for scents cosmetics. One of the Shadowed Ones flitted over to the vanity and the brush hovered in mid-air, invitingly it seemed. Stubbornly, Midii took the brush in her own hand and pulled her hair over to one side of her neck to brush it. She left it loose, scowling at her Shadowed attendant, and continued her explorations.

Back through the bedroom and through a different door Midii found a sitting room with a set of couches, a divan, and three chairs upholstered in black velvet seated around an onyx table. Underneath lay a floor rug in black and silver in front of a long, high gothic fireplace.

Oh, very cheerful, she thought dryly.

The next room, an office, had yet more black in it. The desk was of ebony, as were the wooden chairs, the small side table and the cabinets for filing; the soft, upholstered chair behind the dest was upholstered in black leather with silver studs. There were two matching chairs to either side of the fireplace. The room (a billiard room) sported a stunning array of… yet more black. It was only in the library that she at last found a modicum of color, in the bindings and colors of all of the books there, and even those were dull and muted shades of brown, red, and… black. At least it was big; enormous in fact, with two levels and all of the books sorted into groups according to subject. There were even more books there than existed in the main library of Romafeller! She forgot for a time her distress as she wandered through the shelves; wonder-tales, historical chronicles, philosophies, natural sciences, even books on basic home crafts! The library had everything! Midii chose one at random out of a book of historical war accounts and asked the Shadowed One attending her to show her the way to the garden.

This is… she looked around at the dim open-air garden with weary dismay. Not even the garden had any color in it! All of the plants were dead! Midii plopped down gracelessly on a nearby stone bench and rested her chin on her hand. The light was murky there so she asked a Shadowed One to find her a garden lamp or two and light it for her. She obviously would have no duties that day to attend to Lady Une, so she might as well pass the time by reading a book; whether or not it was a good one remained to be seen.

She was surprised from her engrossing account of one of the battles of the Daemon Wars (she could only assume that some mortal scholar of history had speculated about it hundreds of years later) by the sound of a throat clearing. She looked up to see the lean, shadowed form of the castles master standing nearby. He held out a bouquet of white flowers to her; the petals glowed like moonlight and the pistils in the center were ended in tiny motes of light like stars.

"I created these just for you," he said without preamble. Midii would have gladly cast them back down at his feet and walked off in rejection but… she had a weakness for flowers of any sort; it might be that she came from stock of nature-spirits but she could not callously harm a plant. She accepted the flowers without a word (be damned if she would thank him!) and sat back down on the bench turning away a little to read her book and ignore her unwanted suitor.

He cleared his throat again after a moment and then gently tilted the top of the book down so she had no choice other than to look at him.

"Will you walk with me a while?" he asked softly.

"I suppose I have no choice," she replied ungraciously. "You are after all, the master of this realm. You control everything in it. I suppose if I don't do as you ask you'll set one of your shadow creatures to rend me limb from limb."

He blinked a bit as she stood abruptly and flowed past him; pausing a few steps away to look back impatiently at him.

"Well? Are you going to walk or just stand there staring at me?" she demanded. "The sooner we get your walk done with the sooner I can leave you."

Under her breath she muttered "Not for good, unfortunately."

Trowa said nothing and no flicker of emotion crossed his face; he simply followed silently after her. To Midii's relief he didn't make any attempts at conversation as they circumnavigated the dreary garden. When she turned to leave he gently stopped her.

"Have dinner with me?" he asked.

"I'm not hungry," she replied. No god or god-ling spirit _needed_ to eat although a great many did so out of enjoyment of the past-time.

"Then perhaps you would like to dance; I know you greatly enjoyed the amusement in your previous home," he said. "I could summon fine music for you."

"I loved to dance because I was moved to joy," she replied coldly. "There is no joy here, so no; I do not want to dance."

He bowed shortly and said

"As you will have it then; I wish you a pleasant evening."

Although Midii had left the garden the winner in that dispute, she did not feel any joy in her victory. In fact, it left her feeling worse than when she had started. Nevertheless she had resolved to dislike him, and so dislike him she would. He had brought her here against her will and even though he could inflict her with his company, he couldn't make her like it! She'd do as he asked, but she wouldn't give an inch!

Two weeks later, Trowa was wondering what he had gotten himself into. She looked very beautiful in the dresses and jewels that his minions provided for her, but the sadness in her countenance had lessened his enjoyment of her company. It had only been a short time and yet it seemed that she had faded from the bright vibrant woman he loved to a wisp of a lady dressed in the black finery of death.

Whenever he requested her company she went along only grudgingly, scowling at him the entire time until he gave her leave to depart. Her conversations were short to the point of rudeness, her demeanor decidedly chill; she refused to talk about herself no matter what he asked to try to draw her out and she was patently impatient with his attempts to cheer her into a better mood. His gifts were politely but firmly declined and his attempts to get her to like her surroundings were rejected forcefully. He hadn't gained any ground at all and already he suffered for it; morale was low.

Perhaps I should give her back, he thought. She wasn't happy here in this dark realm and she was rightly taking it out on him. He felt like he was forcing himself on her with every action he took to get to know her a bit better; even the flowers he had created for her had been accepted only grudgingly and probably only for themselves and not because he had made them for her. Perhaps it would be better to ceded to Une's demand to return her handmaiden.

No, he resolved. No, if he did that he'd loose any chance at all of ever seeing her again let alone winning her heart. While she was still there in the Underworld there was a chance, however slim, that she would forgive him for stealing her away and come to love him. If he gave her back to Lady Une that slim chance would become no chance.

Quatre had not been of much assistance when it came to advice; he had wanted Trowa to return Midii to Romafeller despite Trowa's insistence that he would do no such thing no matter what the Lady threatened to do. Trowa was on his own as far as figuring out how to win her over went. He was not very practiced in matters of romance; it was not a wonder when every day brought him new aspects of death, but Trowa had been born as a battle-god and had an instinctive and keen understanding of the nature of War. It had been said in the mortal realm time and again (and Trowa had seen nothing to dispute the saying) that love and war were much the same. If he could understand the one, then he could understand the other.

So, he thought turning the situation over in his mind. She is a heavily strengthened fortress. The ruler cannot be bought off, nor bribed into submission which leaves only siege. 

As a warrior he knew better than any other that laying siege to a walled fortress was the least effective and most costly of all war strategies; in short… it was the last thing any effective general ever did. Any man skilled in the principles of warfare knew to take the enemy's walled fortress by subduing rather than attacking. Protracted warfare was to be avoided; it only led to a decrease in morale of the troops and high costs for the support of the war abroad thus impoverishing the home nation. Strategy stated that a warrior first attacked the enemy's plans rather than attacking the enemy; if the enemy could be outmaneuvered rather than engaged in direct conflict then victory was of highest excellence.

Strategy also states that a commander who knows both himself and his enemy will be consistently victorious, while a commander who knows himself but not his enemy will only triumph occasionally. A commander who knows neither will loose, he reflected.

Trowa knew himself quite well, but his enemy was an enigma to him. The terrain was unfamiliar to him. He had already sacrificed his largest advantage, that of suing for alliance rather than direct conquest. The enemy had stated it position; a will to resist and had fortified itself against him. All in all, from a strategist's point of view he could be well and truly screwed.

Well, then. I have many disadvantages in the current theatre, he thought. But even attacking an enemy against such odds, it is not impossible to create a victory by changing the battlefield. A skilled warrior moves the enemy and is not moved _by_ the enemy but I can do neither if I do not know my enemy. If I am to defeat her strengths then I must create a weakness. In order to figure out what might move her to place herself in a position of disadvantage I must first know more about her. Reconnaissance is crucial. Walking blindly into a battlefield will result in defeat, therefore I should become familiar with my enemy. 

It was a good idea, however there was one problem with it; how was he to probe her strengths and weaknesses when she avoided him at all costs?

A wise military commander had once said that getting the enemy to approach of his own accord was a matter of showing him advantage. To know where he was strong and weak; probe him. To know the patterns of his movement; provoke him.

Hn, in order to understand the patterns of her thoughts and how she is likely to react I must first move her into a position that will enable me to observe her freely. 

He mulled over it for a bit more and then finally struck upon an idea.

Midii rose from the soft bed in her luxurious prison to face another long day of getting that thick headed god of the underworld to realize that she didn't like him and send her home. It hadn't worked so far, but as he had said; hope sprung eternal and she had an eternity to hope. The realm of the dead was silent and…creepy (as usual). There were even times when she was almost glad of Trowa's presence, repugnant as it was, for at least then she was not alone in this frightening place where all of the shadows seemed to have lives of their own and all of the statues were of hideous monsters with gleaming eyes that seemed to watch her as she moved about the castle. She'd never let him know that there were times when she hated him less than usual, it would only encourage him. For the most part she kept to her rooms; except when she knew that he was gone from the Underworld on his errands in the mortal realm, then she usually found her favorite bench in the gardens or curled up in front of the fireplace in the library. Both were public places unfortunately, and thus were fair game for him to find her upon his return. Still, she'd gotten quite good at avoiding him for the most part, by being in the last place he expected. How long could this go on for?

She despised him on principle, but in reality she rather felt sorry for him. He was trapped inside this dismal world with no sunlight, no life, no company. And worse yet, he had the dismal task of collecting the dead; Midii had the notion vaguely that he probably saw enough in one day to leech the compassion out of a hundred men; god or no. It was no wonder he was so dull and humorless, what joy was there to be had in death and misery? She didn't want to understand him, she didn't want to sympathize with him or see his loneliness because she knew that if she did her heart would start to soften towards him and then she'd never get home. So every morning she prepared to harden her heart against the dozens of little kindnesses he did for her, and against the encroaching realization that she was really all he had in this world.

She tried not to think about it, tried to ignore it, but it was difficult because aside of reading or walking in the gardens there was really nothing for her to do _but_ think. She lived a life of leisure now, the least of little services were done for her by her attendant Shadowed Ones who were ubiquitous; it was like they knew exactly what she wanted when she wanted it and they had it right there at her hand waiting for her. She had no real sense of purpose so she just drifted through the fog, trying to keep her mind off her situation. The reading helped; she hadn't had the leisure as Lady Une's handmaiden to read as much as she would have liked but now she had all of the time in the world, (possibly in eternity) however too long a time spent in that activity gave even her eyestrain and headaches. Still, the feeling of having no purpose to rise for other than to avoid the master of the manse only seemed to add to the dreariness of her situation, compounding her unhappiness.

A Shadowed One hovered nearby, waiting to dress and attend her. To her dismay a message globe also awaited her.

"When you are finished dressing, come and attend me in the garden," it said. It was Trowa's voice and it was not a request. Midii sighed, she was stuck for it.

"Damn," she grumbled, resignedly turning to pick a dress at random. She'd choose an unflattering one just to spite him if she could, but unfortunately they all looked good on her and ripping them all up, satisfying as that might be, would just make more work for the Shadowed Ones. So she chose a black silk stola that draped from one shoulder and diamond cords to tie over her torso with a matching diamond shoulder brooch. Her hair she brushed and braided herself. Slipping into her black leather sandals Midii reluctantly made her way to the garden with the Shadowed one preceding her, lighting lanterns to light her way.

She found him at the edge of the hedge maze, sitting on a bench of polished black stone with a black wrought iron table nearby holding a carved marble game of Stratagem. He appeared to be amusing himself while he waited for her by playing a game against one of his Shadowed Ones. It was obviously nothing more than a quick amusement; the Shadowed Ones weren't very bright and Trowa had only moved two of his pieces yet he was poised for victory.

"You rang milord?" she said, not bothering to keep the insolence from her tone. As ever, Trowa ignored her cheek and instead said

"I did," he said, neatly finishing off the game. He turned to her and gestured her sit; she stood. "You truly do not like it here then, even after two weeks? The luxury does not suit you? The fine objects and clothes do not please you? Your attendants do not make you happy?"

"They have nothing to do with what makes me unhappy here," she replied. "This place is… it's the complete opposite of anything that makes me happy."

"And I?" he pressed. "I do not make you happy?"

"You are the cause of my misery in the first place," she replied.

"Hm," he said, leaning back and considering her words. Was he actually going to get the message and let her go back home? A small precious hope welled up inside of her.

"I created this estate solely to please you," he mused dispassionately. "But you do not seem pleased at all. Despite the invitation I've left you with to arrange matters to your satisfaction you make no attempts to please yourself; why?"

"There's no point in changing anything," she replied. "I hope that you'll soon come to your senses and let me go back home where I belong."

"Do I displease you in my long absences when I must go to the mortal realm to do my duty there?"

"You relieve me when you leave for the mortal realm," Midii rebutted. "I no longer must find creative places to hide to avoid you."

"Your honesty is refreshing," he said wryly. "So then you must find the Shadowed Ones better company than I."

No, they frighten me too sometimes, she thought silently. He examined her from beneath his fall of bangs; Midii scrutinized the ground at her feet silently.

"You don't like them," he said. He sighed a bit.

"You must be very lonely here," Trowa said softly. Midii looked at him warily as the unbidden thought appeared in her mind:

At least I have you sometimes. How did you stand it here all of these millennia? I'd go mad without some form of company. 

"Would you like to come with me?" Trowa asked. "We could spend time together… it would at least get you out of this palace and into the sunlight for a while, you look so pale."

"Your concern is touching," she said, trying to inject some acid into her tone but her effort was only half-hearted. She was turning his offer over in her mind. Visit the mortal realm? True she would have to do while she accompanied _him_ but still… She had never been to the mortal realm before, and it _would_ get her out into the sunlight. It would mean spending time with him, but the opportunity to leave this place for the sunlit world was too tempting to pass up; how bad could it be after all?

And maybe, she thought a little hopefully. Maybe I'll have the chance to escape him while he is occupied and return to my Lady. 

"I accept," she said. "Even if it means having to be around you for a day, if I stay down here in this place for any longer I think I'll go mad."

"It will be pleasant to have company on my errands for a change," Trowa said mildly. "My horse is not much of a conversationalist."

"Neither are you," Midii replied. Trowa said nothing to that, merely bowing her to precede him to the front courtyard where, no doubt, his steed awaited.

When Midii emerged from the front doors she found to her surprise that not only did Trowa's dark steed await but that the beast had been hitched to a chariot. Midii's heart sank a little at the sight of a Shadowed One waiting nearby, Trowa had obviously called it to attend her (and likely also keep her from running off). She resigned herself to waiting for the right opportunity. The front gates opened, and Midii tried not to flinch away from the intimidating stone gargoyles to either side.

"They can come alive you know," Trowa mentioned, misinterpreting her fear as interest. "They'll keep you safe."

"Safe?" Midii said sharply but with confusion. "Safe from what? We're in the middle of the Underworld and it's your realm, what could possibly harm us here?"

Trowa looked down at her; from the depths of his cowl his eyes were keen and intelligent. He said

"Never forget that it is from the mortal soul that we gods draw our power and purposes; there is power within even a single soul to change the universe."

"But aren't you the one that gets to decide what happens to those souls?" she asked, feeling a little confused. All of the tales she had read said that the God of the Underworld held dominion over all of the souls of the dead. She had always thought that meant that he got to decide what happened to them after he took the soul from the Mortal's body. "I mean, you are Lord of Death's Realm, all souls who have passed beyond answer to you, don't they?"

"Yes and no," he replied. "I am more like a caretaker than a magistrate."

At her look of confusion he expanded.

"I and my servants free the souls from their flesh and point the way to the Shadowed Gate but each soul carries within it its own private judgment. The souls may answer my call should I ever need it and emerge from the Whisper Gallery to do my bidding but it is simpler to order my Shadowed Ones to attend to any tasks I need, or if it is something that requires logical thought that only humans can do it's easier to request a spirit from the River of Souls to do it for me. I have only once before needed to call upon the aid of the whispers."

"Only once?" Midii questioned, curious in spite of herself. "When was that?"

"Thousands of years ago during the Daemon Wars," he replied. "I had been newly invested into this task when we suffered a sudden recursion of an enemy we thought we had defeated. I summoned an army of souls; legion upon legion of fallen warriors answered my call and rode into battle beside me again."

"That story was true?" Midii said. She had always thought that particular tale of a mighty army of mortal souls rising once again at the command of the God of the Underworld had been nothing more than a tale invented by the mortals who worshipped Trowa to prove that of all of the Gods it was Trowa who was the mightiest. There was always great competition among the temples to expand their flocks, as well as among the gods. It fed into that whole symbiosis; the more mortals who worshipped the stronger the god became, so the temples competed with one another to bring in more worshippers in hopes of a reward from their chosen god.

"Yes," Trowa replied.

And all of the other gods called him the quiet one. That just went to show you… it was always the quiet ones.

Midii was never so happy to emerge from the shadows of that long dark tunnel as she was when she first felt that brightening shock of midday sun. She shut her eyes but let her other senses revel in sensory explosion. The sounds of the forest were sweetest music to her after so long a time of nothing but silence, the only sounds she'd ever heard in the Underworld were her own footfalls and Trowa's voice when he came to visit her. And the scents! Midii was surprised by how much she missed smell, there was no real scent there in the Underworld and it was one of those senses that you didn't notice was missing until there was nothing left to smell. At last, her eyes were adjusted enough to open and she eagerly feasted her gaze upon…

Green! she thought happily. An actual color! 

All things in the Underworld were dull muted grays, shades of black, and lifeless monotone. She'd missed color the most of all! Sunlight! Air! Oh how she'd missed it! Not caring whether Trowa was pleased to see her happy or not, Midii couldn't keep her delight to herself and pointed out the different kinds of plants and flowers she knew; some of them had been gifts to the Mortals by her own parents. After a time the joy of being back in the light again receded a little and Midii was reminded that she was in the company of her keeper.

"So where are we going anyway?" she asked. "I thought that your Shadowed Ones harvested all of the mortal souls."

"I do not _harvest_ them," he corrected. "And yes, the Shadowed Ones do a good deal of the routine work involving releasing a mortal's soul to the River. I am called in for the special cases. In this instance the soul in question cannot, by definition be taken and yet it has petitioned me to release it to the Shadowed Gate."

"I don't understand," Midii said.

"The soul in question belongs to an Immortal," Trowa explained. "Immortals cannot die unless their sacred grounds are deconsecrated and they are killed."

"And this Immortal is asking you to come and… kill it?"

"It's asking me to make it mortal so that it can die peaceably. Since it is a lesser Immortal and not one of the Greater Gods, it is within my power to grant its request," Trowa said, and then he added

"And it is not my duty to kill."

The chariot slowed delicately to a stop in front of a small plot of weed-choked earth in the outskirts of a growing city. In the middle of a cracked fountain that had not been cleaned in a long time drifted a small nature spirit. The poor thing was emaciated; its form unhealthily slender, its hair lank, its eyes dull as it gazed up at them in exhausted desperation.

Midii started for it, her eyes filled with pity. She turned to Trowa.

"Why is this poor thing so starved?" she asked.

"This little spirit was tasked by a small band of mortal priests to guard this grove of medicinal herbs long ago," Trowa said. "Unfortunately, the small temple fell into obscurity and there was no-one who remembered to release the little thing so it stayed here to tend the herbs it had been created for. When the woods around this place were still thick and wild that wasn't a problem, but with the encroachment of man on its spot of territory its cut off from any food supplies. The Immortal is starving to death, but because it is immortal it cannot die."

"That's awful," Midii said. "Why doesn't it find somewhere else to go?"

"It's tied to the land, and not powerful enough to release it from its own purpose," Trowa replied. "In this case, the only release it can find is death."

Trowa stepped down from the chariot and walked calmly over to the spirit. The pathetic little creature looked up excitedly at his approach, begging with its eyes for him to come for it.

"I've heard your request," she heard him say quietly. "And have come in answer to your summons. Are you certain that this is what you want? Once I release you to the Shadowed Gate, there is no turning back. Your soul will join the other whispers just as if you were a mortal."

The little thing chimed weakly at him, and he cocked his head to one side, listening.

"Very well," he said after a pause. "I hope you have the benefit of your reward."

Trowa reached downwards toward the little spirit, his shadowed cape and cowl drifting about him like dark fog as his hand emitted a silvery light. When he touched the little Immortal a soft silver-grey cloud shot through with tiny sparkling motes of light like stars coalesced about his hand. He drew it carefully away from the small ephemeral body of the spirit and held it briefly to his chest.

There came the sound of the wind sighing through the trees, like a thousand tiny whispers breathing then subsiding. Trowa's cloak momentarily billowed about him in a sudden directionless zephyr as motes of light, like sparks from a fire that shifted and were borne aloft on the wind, spiraled upwards and disappeared. The breeze died down and Trowa returned to the carriage. Midii said nothing as he took the reigns and signaled his horse to continue on his way.

She had just actually seen the God of the Underworld release a soul to the join the river as it wended its way through the Underworld towards the Shadowed Gate. It had been sad. Midii wished she could have done something to help the little spirit, but in this case it truly looked like death was the kindest thing for it. Perhaps his duty wasn't so bad then.

"Where are we going now?" Midii asked after a time of silence. Trowa wasn't much of a talker even though he was making obvious pains to try to talk to her in hopes of getting to know her better.

"There is a special case nearby," Trowa said. He slowed the chariot in front of a very modest mortal dwelling. Inside, Midii could hear a woman weeping. She followed quickly in Trowa's wake as he stepped in to the abode. A woman dressed in a coarsely spun stola knelt on the floor cradling a child in her arms, weeping as though her heart was broken. The tiniest breath of glowing fog hovered nearby with a few infinitesimal motes of light, like the last tiny spark before they all die out, drifting in the wisp. The baby's soul! Midii gasped, how terrible! Hovering nearby was a Shadowed One; but unlike all of the others (which were formless, shifting beings of night) this one was brightly colored with brilliant feathered wings and hands with long slender fingers to play a flute that it carried.

"That's Moki," Trowa said quietly to her. "He collects the souls of all of the infants and children who die. They like his bright plumage and his flute playing, and so they do not fear when they enter the Underworld."

Midii nodded, unable to speak.

Trowa reached for the wisp, but the mother held the body of her child to her and the fog would not be separated from the body that had held it. Trowa tried once more to take the infant's soul but the mother shook her head and clung harder to her child. Midii saw where the woman had cut open her wrists and used her blood to create a barrier circle around her; she was probably the village priestess or witch. The spirit of the child could not leave the circle she had cast, and probably would not leave while its mother wept so desperately.

"Mortal woman," Trowa said dispassionately. "Your child is dead. You must release its soul to the Underworld."

"No!" the young mother cried.

Trowa tried once more to take the soul from the barrier that she had built; he could cross it fine but the child's soul remained inside.

"Mortal," he said once more. "You know not what you do by detaining the child in this way. By keeping the soul here it cannot pass beyond; it is too young to know where to go on its own and if it cannot be collected by Moki, then it will become a ghost that will haunt this spot."

"You don't understand!" the woman screamed miserably at him. "This child was my only hope. The birthing of Yillisin left me torn inside; after this I can have no more!"

Midii could sense as Trowa gathered his power to him (probably deciding that he was through doing things the easy way); it was like every shadow in the room suddenly grew larger and longer, imbued with a supernatural presence that felt thick on the tongue as though you were breathing in mist. Midii suddenly grabbed his arm.

"Wait," she said. Trowa looked over at her, mildly surprised (of course, Trowa did everything mildly).

"It is my duty to collect this soul," he said. "I know you pity her; but the child is already dead, it cannot be spared."

Midii approached the woman, passing through the barrier with minimal effort. She knelt down, her black silk skirts pooling about her gracefully. The mortal raised her chin, looking up at Midii with her tear-moistened eyes brimming with grief.

"Trowa is right, young mortal," Midii said gravely. "Your son is already dead. You can do nothing more for him but to release his soul to the Shadowed Gate."

Tears welled up in the mortal woman's eyes. She tried to shake her head in denial.

"I can't…" the mortal wept. "My baby! My only hope!"

"I can't spare your child, but I can give you your hope," Midii offered. "My mother was worshipped as a spirit of fertility and healing as well as nature; some of her power passed to me."

Midii closed her eyes and reached down deep inside of herself, searching for that small wellspring of latent power that rested within her. It had been a while since she had done this; it hadn't been necessary in Romafeller because she'd been a handmaiden there and there were no mortals that had anything they needed and in the Underworld… that place seemed to have a strange effect on her latent abilities; Life and Death were rather inimical to one another it seemed. She coaxed a tendril of power to the surface and sent it flowing over to the mortal, smoothing the rippled scarred flesh and soothing it into renewal.

The mortal gasped, her hand flew to her abdomen.

"I can feel-!" she exclaimed. Midii nodded her head once and said

"You can have more children now, by the turning of the next full moon you will once more be at full fertility. Now you must release your son."

The young mother wiped away her tears and nodded reluctantly.

"I'll always think of what might have been," she said sadly. "But at least now I still have a chance."

The woman closed her eyes and the barrier dissipated. Trowa reached once more for the child's spirit and this time it came away in his hands. There was the sound of whispers and sighing wind…

"I wish to send my prayers of thanks to you goddess," the witch said formally. "Who shall I call upon to send my prayers?"

Before Midii could speak Trowa quickly replied for her.

"The Queen of the Underworld," he said.

"I am _not_!" she snapped, scowling at him and stomping out to wait at the chariot (but not before she caught him in the shin with a well placed kick in passing). She called to the mortal over her shoulder at the threshold.

"You may send your prayers to my mother, Neira the Green Mother. Just light a sprig of thyme and twirl it thrice about your head when the moon is full when you want your prayers to reach her."

"Thank-you, I will," the mortal replied. Midii departed the abode so she didn't hear the woman look at Trowa impishly and say

"Trouble in paradise oh Lord of Death's Realm?"

A few moments later the God of the Underworld rejoined his displeased partner for that day and said

"You did well in there. I have never been able to soothe the ones left behind; always I have had to take comfort in the fact that soon or late they too will join the river."

Midii said nothing, but the frown she gave him had less heat in it. She had done good work in there, so she supposed she could forgive him for taking liberties… besides, the sun was still shining.

The next place he took her too however, had the effect of sucking out any and all enjoyment she had taken out of the sunlight. It was a battlefield; or to be more accurate, it was a slaughter. There was death everywhere as evidenced by the numerous Shadowed Ones flitting here and there over the prone and bleeding bodies of men and women who no longer need cry out in agony from wounds left untended. Midii, sheltered all of her life, had never before been faced with such a magnitude of misery and after that first long uncomprehending stare where her mind could not quite seem to take in and process all of the myriad things thrown at her senses; the heavy coppery smell of blood, the carnage of butchered bodies open to the sun, the sounds of moans of agony as the living who could move separated themselves from the dead and went in search of a priest from the temple of Relena, goddess of Healing Midii closed her eyes tight and turned her face into Trowa's cloak.

Trowa was utterly unmoved by it all, his emotionless eyes taking in the bloodbath before him with calm equilibrium.

"Over here!" a feminine voice called impatiently. Midii looked over (trying to keep her eyes carefully away from the misery before her) and saw a young woman dressed in the armor and helm of a soldier. She had long blonde hair down to her knees, pale blue eyes and a haughty expression. At her feet lay a fallen warrior with armor of electrum and a blue cape; obviously he was one of her chosen Heroes.

"It's about time you arrived," she said. "My warrior has been—Who is _this_?"

"Dorothy, this is—"

"Midii, Lady Une's favorite handmaiden," Dorothy surmised. "How perfectly wonderful! You've decided to fight."

Out of all of the former War gods and goddesses in Romafeller, Midii had always found Dorothy to be the strangest. She was convinced that war was a beautiful thing and that man was most noble when he was fighting for his beliefs; and yet the war goddess spent all of her time with Relena, the Goddess of Peace and Healing trying to convince the goddess who held peace supreme that war was in fact the thing which ennobled mankind. Perhaps she just needed someone to argue with, but Midii thought it was more likely that she just liked to have someone to inflict her stories and raves upon. Relena was just too nice to tell her to bugger off.

"Lady Une is most upset with you for this particular stunt, not even her beloved Treize can calm her rage. I'm sure it will be a beautiful battle, I'm looking forward to it," Dorothy said enthusiastically.

"Glad I could make your day," Trowa said dryly. "Now what do you want?"

"Relinquish this warrior's soul," Dorothy said, getting down to business. "I wish to immortalize him."

"Noted," Trowa said. He gathered his shadowed power in his hand and enveloped the fallen warrior in shining darkness. A moment later it dissipated without a sound.

"He's all yours now," Trowa said.

"Oh Trowa," Dorothy called as he turned to take Midii away from the scene that obviously distressed her. "I'm looking forward to a glorious struggle, one worthy of a ballad at least; don't disappoint me."

Trowa said nothing as he stepped onto the chariot again.

"Take me away from here," Midii asked quietly, trying to keep the desperation from her voice. "It's terrible."

Trowa looked down at her calmly, his face a mask of detachment as he said

"I am the God of the Underworld, such sights are very common to me; but if it disturbs you I will not remain behind to supervise."

He lifted a hand and the shadows of the evening stretching across the battlefield lengthened and coalesced, thickening with that heavy feeling on the back of her tongue. There came the sound of sighing wind and a thousand tiny whispers…

A horde of misty spirits floated up and followed the Shadowed Ones toward the River of Souls in the Underworld.

The chariot bore them swiftly away from the death and carnage and Midii breathed a sigh of relief when she was taken back out to where the air was fresh and there were no bodies littering the ground. Such terrible misery, how did he bear it?

"Aren't you at least a little sad Trowa?" she demanded, her raw emotions making her unusually prickly. "There were so many dead mortals there. They all died in pain and sadness. Can't you at least cry a little for them?"

"I've been a soldier from the day I was Born, and I used enough sad faces so long ago that I don't have any more," he said. His tone was even, without a trace of emotion.

He's so cold and unfeeling, Midii thought, suppressing a shiver. How can he see this terrible battlefield, all those people suffering in agony, and not feel anything for them? Was it true that he had no heart then? But he was so warm and steady at her back; she leaned back against him…

The mortal world blew past them in a blur of light and color as Trowa's steed pulled the chariot to their next destination. They stopped outside of a large, imposing stone building and Midii got a sudden feeling of chill. Something wasn't right here. Midii felt an aura of… something; she just knew that whatever lay inside was something she didn't want to see.

"What are we here for?" Midii asked, twisting to look up into Trowa's shadowed face.

"A group of mortals dares to impinge upon my authority," Trowa said. His voice was the same even tones he always had, but Midii could swear she heard the slightest edge in it.

Trowa stepped down from the chariot to enter the building, passing through the doors as if they were nothing more than illusion. Midii followed quickly after him, and then wished that she hadn't. That aura she had sensed was pain and misery. Hung along the walls from chains in untenable positions like some kind of macabre statuary were mortals, still living, but sporting all sorts of terrible bruises, cuts, and mutilations. Midii had never before seen with her own eyes the evidences of torture, but now that she had she was shaken. They were in such terrible pain she couldn't see how they could bear it; indeed some few of the mortals could actually see Trowa and looked to him with the same kind of longing that she had seen in the eyes of the nature spirit earlier. Midii couldn't bear to watch another creature in that kind of pain and do nothing to ease it; she tugged at the back of Trowa's cloak to get his attention. He paused to look back at her.

"Trowa, we have to help them." she said firmly.

"No," he said coolly.

"No! What do you mean no!" she demanded. "These mortals are in agony; we can't just do nothing and leave them this way!"

"It is not our place to interfere," Trowa said. "We're not here for them."

"How can you be so callous! Don't you see their suffering?" she shouted at him. Her words had no effect on the cool detachment in his gaze, Trowa simply turned away and continued on to his destination. Midii frowned at his back and set to one side to help them herself; she could at least unbind their chains and bring them down from that wall so that they could escape. But when she reached for the mortal Midii discovered that there was some force keeping her in place and unable to help them.

"Trowa!" she called angrily into the darkness ahead. "Unleash me!"

"Mine is not the power that holds you bound Midii," his voice drifted back to her from the shadows.

Midii rushed ahead to confront him.

"Then why couldn't I set them free?" she demanded when she reached him.

"We aren't here for them," he replied. "We cannot interfere with their fates. That is not within my authority."

They passed through a last door and Midii gasped at what she saw there.

On a stone altar in the center of the room a man was stretched out naked but that alone would not have had the power to shock her. The man was held to the table by a series of spikes driven through his skin and blood oozed sluggishly from a thousand tiny cuts all across his body. He was being bled out and all of his blood was being collected into an enormous round bowl. There were three robed attendants methodically cauterizing each of the wounds with a hot iron spike while the man screamed in agony, weeping and begging for them to stop or at the very least to kill him and end his misery. There were other robed men nearby chanting over a forge and bellows, making something out of glass or metal but it was the man screaming helplessly on the altar that held her attention.

"Stop it!" Midii cried. She rushed forward to try to knock the pokers from the robed men's hands but was stopped once more by an invisible force.

"Trowa!" she yelled, struggling against the power that held her captive. "Let me go!"

"It's not my power that holds you bound," he said emotionlessly. "Those men can't see you or hear you anyway so any action you take will be ineffectual."

" I won't believe that," she said stubbornly. "Don't you see his suffering? How can you stand by and let that happen!"

"It is not my place to interfere with them," Trowa said tonelessly and he calmly walked over to where the mirror resided. "Excepting of course, in those places where they interfere with me."

"But look at this evil thing they are doing to another of their own kind," Midii said, pointing to the man on the table who let out another hoarse scream of agony as one of the robed men plunged the poker into the man's flesh again. Midii flinched away, covering her ears and shrinking back into Trowa's cloak.

"It is unfortunate, but no more or less than has been done to other mortals at other times," he replied without feeling.

Trowa simply walked over to the robed monks working on the forge and gestured and the thing they were forging; a white-hot mirror of silver and glass. The shadowed cloak bristled with power for a moment, whispering around him and the mirror shattered; exploding into fine white powder. The mortals who made the thing, unfortunately, did not die, they were not even harmed.

Midii felt tears welling up in her eyes as the man staked to the altar whimpered and moaned in agony. She sniffled as they flowed down her cheeks. He was in such pain, such torment, and she could do nothing… nothing. Midii didn't think she could bear it. She looked at her captor imploringly, humbling herself to ask with her eyes that he do something to help that poor mortal.

Trowa looked back over at her. It could have been a trick of the shadows of his cowl but Midii could have swore that she saw a flicker of emotion cross his imperturbable demeanor. His voice had its usual stoic emotionless tones as he said

"I do not have the authority to visit death to mortals for my own desires," he said in response to her silent plea. "I collect the souls; I do not decide their fate for myself."

"You can't punish them?" she asked hesitantly. If there were ever any mortals deserving to have a visit from death, surely it was these ones! Look at how they treated their fellow living being!

"No, I can't," he replied.

"But why not?" she asked, not understanding. He was the God of the Underworld, surely he could take the souls from these mortals!

"I answer to a larger universe Midii, as do the rest of the Gods," Trowa said calmly. "It is not my place to interfere."

"Make it stop," she whispered. "I can't… I can't take it."

She buried her face in his shadowed cloak, as she wept helpless tears of sadness for such a terrible fate to be delivered upon a mortal. Trowa held her securely, not certain whether he should be happy that she was in his arms or sad that she was so upset. He could not understand why she wept so for the mortal; Trowa had seen far worse things in his time. Still, he should try to comfort her, say something at least.

"I am not allowed to take sides," he said; but this time his voice sounded a little different, softer. There was still that hollow quality to it, but at the same time there was an edge of something that had been dulled by the passage of centuries.

"I have been the God of the Underworld for almost as long as there have been mortal souls to pass through the Shadowed Gate; and before that I had been a soldier from my very first instant of awareness. Death is all I know. This scene that affects you so much is one that I have seen many times over the centuries in many different forms. Despite the fact that mortals suffer, and that mortals make others suffer, I cannot choose who lives and who dies. I am never allowed to "fix things," I have not the authority to order a mortals death before his time. I cannot be selfish in that way; I am mandated by my position to always be impartial; to never take sides in my task no matter what the offending mortals crime."

"How can you bear it?" she said sobbingly, her heart aching for the needless suffering of a living creature at the hands of one of its own brethren.

"I have no choice," he replied.

"Come," he said, when her weeping would not cease. "This place distresses you, we shall leave it."

He gently scooped her up into the night-folds of his cloak and bore her outside to his waiting chariot. She was too distressed to withstand more of the kinds of things that he saw on his rounds. Trowa mentally cursed himself for being four kinds of an idiot; if he had been thinking with his head he would have realized that Midii wasn't accustomed to being around the kinds of things that he had known all of his life. She was very sheltered; as Lady Une's handmaiden she had been kept close for her entire life within the bounds of that paradise of the gods. Death was all but a foreign concept to her and here he was bringing her face to face with some of the more tragic aspects of it.

Once they were back out in the sunlight and fresh air (Trowa solicitously brought her to a nice forest glen to recover) she seemed to improve a bit; at least her coloring got better. He spread his dark cloak out on the ground for her to lie upon and ordered the Shadowed One attendant to bring her mortal food and drink; in a trice it was back with a small feast.

"Thank-you," she said softly as he offered her an exotic fruit from some far away land across the ocean and to the south.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked after a time.

"A little," she said, obviously still shaken. She looked up towards him (even with the two of them sitting he was still much taller than she).

"It was horrible," she said, her voice still raw with sorrow for the mortal. "How can they do such things to each other? Is this the source from where we divine beings draw our strength?"

"Mortals are capable of cruelty and evil towards one another," Trowa allowed, searching for the words to answer the questions she had not asked. "However, that is not their only, or even their most common aspect. They are capable of great good as well; great kindness, great sacrifice, great strength. Not every mortal is a saint, but again not every mortal is a sadist either. Mostly they run to the better side of the middle; they face the choice to better themselves by harming their fellows and they turn away from it. There are some that revel in their darker side, but I believe that for every darker soul is one that embraces the light."

"Do you see things like that back there every day?" she asked.

"Nearly every day," Trowa replied honestly. "I suppose it is the nature of my profession to see the darker aspects of humanity."

"Do you… do you like what you do Trowa?" she asked, a little hesitantly. Trowa considered her words and replied

"I neither like nor dislike my occupation," he said. "This, and being a soldier, is the only life I know. I have no basis for comparison."

"I see," she said, then after a pause she added. "That doesn't seem very fair."

"How so?" he questioned.

"Well it just seems… It seems like you got shafted," she said, indignation coloring her voice. "All of the other gods got to pick a realm and duties that suit their nature and they just decided to give you this because you were the quiet one. It's not fair that your life is so dismal!"

Trowa looked amused at her indignation on his behalf; it was nice to see her sympathizing with his plight instead of telling him to shove off.

"Well," he said after a silent pause. "Things aren't all bad, recently."

"How so?" she questioned in turn.

"Recently," he said. "I've had you in my world."

Midii didn't say anything to that, but her cheeks flushed a little. Trowa wasn't sure what that reaction meant but he decided to take it as a good sign. Since he was indeed the God of the Underworld Trowa made an executive decision and decided to hold off on his duties for the rest of that day and spend it with her. He took her around to visit some of the more amazing ruins and long-forgotten ancient tombs he was privy to; created centuries ago by mortals and then later forgotten by their descendants; they were filled with murals, statuary and in some cases great treasures. He enjoyed sharing his knowledge of the civilizations of the ancients; how they had lived, their architecture, the special fighting styles that they had developed. Midii seemed to be warming up to him, or at least seemed to be interested in what he had to say.

He was pleasantly surprised when, that evening, she emerged from her rooms when he was present and joined him near the fireplace in the library.

"This doesn't mean I like you," she warned him as she seated herself in a chair brought over by a Shadowed One.

"Thank you anyway," he said. "I'm pleased that you would stomach your dislike for me to keep me company this evening."

"Well," she said, grudgingly. "One cannot play Strategy against the Shadowed Ones; it's no challenge. So you see that I have no choice but to seek you out if I want to have a good game."

"I can promise you a good game," Trowa replied. "I've had many centuries to perfect the art of Strategy."

"I should give you a fair warning," Midii said, taking the silver pieces for herself. "I was beating Trieze every other game back when I was still in Romafeller. I will give you no quarter."

"I shall look forward to playing against you then."

Despite her brave words, Trowa soundly defeated her in that game but in the rematch game she demanded in order to soothe her pride she made him fight for every piece. It almost seemed as if she was reluctant to leave him when she pleaded exhaustion and departed for her rooms. Things were looking up for Trowa, but despite the days progress Midii still remained wary of him. He still didn't know nearly enough about her to even begin to try to understand her. He needed a way to both lower her guard enough to study her in her natural state as well as gain her trust (or at least her gratitude) by giving her something that might make her happy. If she were happy, she'd want to come back; but what could he give her?


	3. Chapter 3

"I've decided that I will throw a ball here in the Underworld and invite all of the other deities to attend."

Midii blinked at him in surprise from across the board of the game of Strategem they played. Of all of the things she had thought he might say to her, that one had not appeared anywhere on the list. The God of the Underworld was notoriously reclusive; the other gods (with a few exceptions) usually only happened across him in the course of his duties. There had never been any cases of the gods visiting in this realm that she had ever heard of; and to throw a party!

"To that end I want you to prepare the castle for it," Trowa said, jarring her unpleasantly out of her thoughts.

"Excuse me?" she said coldly. "You want me to do what?"

"You've made it quite clear that you find this palace unsatisfactory in your sight," Trowa replied neutrally. "I wouldn't want to make a poor impression upon my peers, so I want you to ready this place so that they will find it more comfortable, plus write the invitations, find music, and other necessities. I assume that you would know more about it than I, having been Lady Une's favorite handmaiden."

"Preparing for the party is not a problem for me," she said lifting her chin a little. "But I wouldn't want to do anything that might make you happy, you might start to think that I like you and I don't."

"I would think that, by now, that goes without saying. But if I must make it a demand, I will."

Midii thought quickly, a demand was not the same as a command; it was still just barely on the shade of a request, only not so polite. She might get away with a refusal but it was best to be cautious.

"And if I refuse?" she said, meeting his eyes.

"That is, of course, your right," he said impassively. Midii's eyes gleamed with triumph.

"However," he added. "You would loose your chance for your reward."

"What, more jewels?" she riposted dryly. "No thank-you. The only reward you could offer me that I would value would be-"

"Your freedom," he said equably. Her heart leapt. Could he mean…?

"For one month," he qualified. Her heart receded back again. It wasn't a promise to release her from this place at last and let her go home where she belonged, but after having spent so much time in this miserable dreariness, _any_ chance to get away from it for however long an amount of time was to be leapt at. It was better than nothing.

"One month?" she asked, needing to be certain. "And I could return to my home? I could stay there for all of that time?"

"You can travel anywhere you wish," he promised. "But you must give me you most solemn oath that, once that time is done with, you will return here to me."

She thought hard about it for a moment. An oath amongst Gods was a serious thing; a God or godling spirit (like she was) could not betray her sworn vow. Once it was given, it was binding. If she swore her oath to return to Trowa once that time was done with then she would be bound to do so and nothing or no-one could interfere on her behalf. To do so would make her Oathbreaker, and that was not to be thought of. Still, it would be a month. Three weeks in which she could bask in the sun, talk with her friends, and stroll through her sunlit garden! She wanted that badly.

"Very well, I agree," she said at last. "I'll prepare for your gala, create the perfect celebration in return for your promise to release me home for a month and my promise to return once that time is done."

"Good," he said, examining her measuringly. He offered her his hand; she clasped it and they shook on the bargain.

"In order to complete the task you've set me I'll need access to the authority and resources to get it done," Midii added after a brief pause. Trowa looked vaguely indulgent for a moment as he said

"Of course. As God of the Underworld I grant you full and equal use of my power and authority, provided," he qualified, raising a long elegant finger. "That you do not use it to escape me."

"I won't," she said. Then at his pointed look Midii grudgingly added. "You have my word."

She didn't like it, but she was willing to lay aside her enmity towards him and jump through a few hoops if she had to in order to win free of this place for even a brief time. Midii felt an odd, foggy chill settle over her as Trowa granted her the powers of the Lord of the Underworld. Midii turned without a backwards glance to survey the palace in earnest and take stock of all that needed to be done.

He's granted me his powers and bargained from me a purpose that suits his ends, she thought as she waded slowly through the luminescent fog that drifted in and out of the chambers. I can't take overt revenge on him of course, but I'm not above making life a little unpleasant for him. This is going to serve him right. 

When Trowa had placed all of the resources of the realm of the dead at Midii's disposal he hadn't quite been expecting… this.

"This" was a miniature army of disembodied spirits flitting this way and that, overseeing tasks that she had assigned to them. She seemed to take particular delight in usurping his private quarters with her demonic army of hench-seamstresses to festoon all of his walls with hangings of (of all things in Deaths Realm) _pink_ draperies. She said they were colors called "heart's rose" and "mauve" but they looked pink to him. Before this exercise in amusement for her had begun he wouldn't have known a what a corduroy was if it had swatched all over him but she appeared to take great delight in having one of her evil minions educate him… at length… with samples. She also seemed to take delight in seeking out his opinion about niggling little trivialities that he had not the first clue about. How was he to know the difference between eggshell and ecru? He took it all gamely in stride however, it was all part of his plan and he was learning lots.

In a matter of two days, just _two_, she had built an organized and disciplined army of specialists and menials that would rival to work of any great general. She'd gone from having one or two Shadowed attendants under her command to having annexed _all_ of them to her command. Command was a good word for it too; she ran the operation with all of the seasoned expertise and precision of a general in the field.

In an afternoon, she'd taken the powers he had gamely granted to her in order to fulfill her task and she had run with them. She'd plucked out various spirits from the river of souls, men and women who had excelled in the fields of interior design, fashion, architecture, calligraphy and a variety of other fields that he assumed had something to do with preparing this estate to host an extravagant party and had set them in charge of small groups of Shadowed Ones. The meeting she had held on the evening she had assigned duties and missions rivaled any tactical meeting held on the field. Trowa found himself admiring her organization, her poise, and her good sense. Hers was the hand on the rudder and her impromptu army of spirits and servants well knew who was Lady of the Manse.

If I could get the girl to fall in love with me, we could well be a perfect match, he thought, pleased. …Or I could be facing a hostile takeover. 

That could be fun too.

His plan was two-fold, really. The mission he had assigned to her would allow him to observe her in her natural state so that he could gather at least a little intelligence; and incidentally it would forestall Lady Une making good on any of the threats she had made when last they had met. Midii would return to Romafeller temporarily, which would buy Trowa some time to work his way around the will of the Queen of the Gods. That was incidental really, what truly mattered to him was his reconnaissance on Midii. If he could just begin to understand her…

Well, he had gathered plenty of intelligence in the last two days; aside of finding that Midii had a ready grasp on the organization and deployment of specialists he had discovered that she had an active mischievous streak. Like the time when she had "accidentally" ordered his wardrobe of garments befitting the Lord of the Underworld replaced with… well, the replacements had a lot of frills and lace and a good deal of them had been pink, and the tight hose had caused him to shudder. She had also, out of the generosity of her heart he was certain, taken it upon herself to "spruce up" his personal chambers. Gone was the collection of swords, maces, pikes, spears and other implements of destruction that he had collected over the years and arrayed in his study, and in their place had appeared a cozy tea service on the table and hanging wall decorations featuring cute little animals with doe-like eyes. She had also somehow contrived to have the voice of some soprano belting out an aria piped into his chambers, activated whenever he attempted to summon one of _her_ Shadowed Ones (the ones she had pressed into service, that is). Despite her little side-mission to make his life miserable, (Trowa was certain that she had assigned a special task-force to attend to _him_ personally) her primary task of preparing the estate to host the fete proceeded apace.

Her first endeavor on her campaign was to clear the entire estate of the creeping mist by ordering the Shadowed Ones to gather it all, and then to condense the luminescent vapor into brightly glowing liquid which she then had placed in crystal globes and set into all of the chandeliers, wall sconces, and lamps. Then she and her captains of lighting design had debated over whether or not the ensuing pure white light was not, in fact, too harsh for the occasion. They had gone on to place yellowed shades over them to dim them down a little.

Because Midii was now, in effect, Lady of the Realm, it and all things in it answered to her the same as they answered to him; everything, including the castle that he had himself created.

The sinister black marble pillars and ribbed arches of carved stone in the shape of starved souls that supported the vaulted ceiling of the main hall had been made less sinister by changing them to plain mirrored pillars with water running down the sides, causing the images the mirrors reflected to waver. Instead of the arches carved to the shape of despairing souls with their arms outstretched to support the weight of an unbearable load, the figures had been changed slightly to resemble the peaceful saints who supported his temples. The main hall floor had been changed from polished cuts of black marble to a whole piece of clearest crystal that could let one see the pool of clear water she had placed beneath. The bottom of the pool was mosaic tile with bright lights that shone up from through the rippling play of water that flowed down into the pools from the sides of the pillars, through the clear glass of the floor and up to the ceiling; the mosaic depicted a scene from the Wars, from one of his own greatest battles in fact. He was quite pleased by that; even if she was likely getting the account from one of her consultants it showed that she was at least learning something of him. The dome of opaque black glass that he had placed at the top of the pillars in the main hall she had decided to leave intact as a backdrop for the play of the natural changing ripples of light caused by the light shining through the water. Sharp edges of light and shadow danced through the clear air, the movement of the light emphasized by the soft, thin carpet of glowing mist that she left to hover over the glass, moving with the currents of air. The overall effect was mesmerizing. Clearly she had the taste not to choose to blanket things with gaudy illusions when subtle changes of light and tone would add more over all effect than the finest crafted illusion.

The grand dining room to the left of the main hall had been left tiled in polished black marble to offset the stark white of the linins she had chosen to dress the one long table that dominated the room; which he had originally furnished in polished black marble. Perhaps as a concession to the overall tenor of the realm all of the dishes were shining black with a hematite stripe about the rim picking up the color of the floor; the stemware was of black crystal and the white light gleamed off from darkened silver utensils and candlesticks. The long room on the other side of the main hall had been changed; the formerly stone wall had been changed to clear glass leading out into the central courtyard of the garden. Trowa didn't know how she'd managed it since the central garden in the castle was to the back of the main hall, but there it was. The garden was lit with floating will o' the wisps placed inside black wrought iron lanterns. There was nothing to be done about the dead plant life (since this was after all the Realm of the Dead) so Midii had made a virtue of necessity and replaced all of the shriveled, dead plants with flowers of cut black crystal and climbing vines of blackened wrought iron.

Midii was in the process of weeding through the souls of the dead she had plucked from the river to assemble a small symphony of players to play music for the inevitable dancing as Trowa walked up to her.

"You've accomplished a remarkable amount in the last four days," he said as an opening gambit. She started a little as she turned to face him; apparently she had yet to grow accustomed to the way he made no sound as he moved. "I admit to being impressed."

"You should be," she replied. "I've taken your estate from a tastelessly cold monochrome and added style, elegance, and illumination while keeping the character of your realm intact. After all, your guests are coming expecting to see something suited to the Underworld and would be disappointed to be met with a copy of Romafeller."

"So it was for my guests benefit and not to see me comfortable then?" he inquired.

"I would as soon see you uncomfortable as possible," Midii replied candidly, and her features pulled into a teasingly thoughtful expression. "It is definitely a project for the future."

Trowa avoided any remarks on the future; his bringing up the subject would only remind her that he held her here, which in turn would cause her to close up on him and he wanted to evade that. He'd try to keep her in her relatively open mood as long as possible in hopes of gleaning valuable information for his own campaign. Instead, he tried another compliment. He had been diligent in his praise of her efforts and her beauty in hopes of winning her regard but thus far his efforts had met with no success.

"How could I possibly be miserable when I'm near such beauty?"

"I'm sure I'll figure something out," she grumbled. "Are you going to help or are you going to stand around wasting my time? If you have nothing useful to do then begone so I can finish here."

He found her shooing motions cute. A long dormant and repressed streak of puckishness suddenly bobbed to the surface and he said

"Well, since you put it that way, perhaps I will stay and help."

"You'll only be in my way," she replied as she absently nodded her head in acceptance of one soul's playing.

"There must be something I can do," he sallied.

Midii opened her mouth to deny his claim but paused.

"Those flowers," she replied. "The white ones you gave me. They wouldn't be out of place in the garden."

Trowa hid his surprise. She was actually (in a way) inviting him to participate! Well, it looked like this mission of his had granted him unexpected benefits; usually she made every effort to be rid of him but it looked like her attitude towards him might be softening a little. Perhaps there was hope of being invited to spend more time with her.

"And don't think that just because I let you help me with those flowers of yours that I like them or you," she added as a parting shot before wandering off to see to her next task. "Because you know I don't like you. I just don't like to settle for less than my best on a task, no matter who it's done for. It's a matter of pride."

Or not. Trowa shrugged; at least he had gleaned some information from her. She took pride in her work; a possible point of weakness in her fortress walls for him to exploit in his campaign. In this particular war he'd take his victories where he could find them.

Midii sighed a little to herself. Damn the man. As a gambit to make her warm to the place it was actually starting to work… in Romafeller Midii had not had any say in so much as a placement of a fresh bouquet without the approval of Lady Une; her heavy hand and work were seen everywhere from the light filtering through the sheer white curtains to the mathematically perfect flowerbeds and hedges of the inner gardens. Everything in Romafeller was ordered, organized and approved by Lady Une. Even in Midii's own private quarters the things she placed about the room on a way that felt "lived in" were silently returned to a place that was more organized and fitting to them by the invisible air servants as soon as Midii's back was turned. She hadn't really thought of it much then but here in the Underworld, when she told her Shadowed Ones to "leave it" they left it and she could order her things to her liking. Now she had been invited to stretch her talents and imagination to the limits; turning the murky, dismal Underworld into a place on par with any of the estates of the other Greater Gods while keeping its basic character intact was a very big challenge and she found herself liking the challenge.

As a change of pace it was certainly… interesting. In Romafeller Midii had known down to the minute what each day would bring her; how long she would spend helping Lady choose her raiment and dress, how long she would spend attending Lady at breakfast, her precise duties in weeding through Ladies missives and on and on. Everyday had been the same routine over and over; even her afternoon stroll and dance had been predictable and it was the one time when she had ever really felt free. She wasn't happy in this dark gloomy Underworld, but she had worked with what she had and now felt a feeling of pride and triumph in her accomplishment. She was particularly proud of her work on the grand Hall; those pillars of twisted, starving lost souls caught mid-moan had been the first thing to go. What could this man be thinking? Was he trying to scare everyone away? (He would certainly have succeeded with her if there had been anywhere to run to.) Or was it just that…

Or is it just that that's all he knows? she wondered.

Trowa spent each day in the mortal realms visiting to mortal a wide array of deaths. He knew death in all of its forms; old age, sickness, plague, murder, famine, sacrifice and… torture. Everyday he was treated to the worst that humankind could do to itself and he was tasked with the duty to never take sides, no matter what the situation he was faced with. Death was not allowed to take revenge; the soul supplied its own form of punishment and despite the fact that he ruled deaths realm, the adjuration of souls was not his responsibility. He seemed cold, emotionless and utterly without compassion yet when he was faced with circumstances like those every day how could he be anything else?

Added to that was the fact that Trowa spent all of his time among the dead and it seemed that his only constant companions were the Shadowed Ones; not terribly bright and though they were useful they weren't any suitable companion for a person. He wouldn't get any intellectual stimulation out of them certainly and Midii could tell even in the short time she had spent with the Lord of Death's Realm that if nothing else Trowa was possessed of a keen intellect. He could opine knowledgably about any of the classics of literature, art and philosophy although his interests tended to run to historical accounts and military campaigns(possibly because he had been near to hand for all of them).

The Underworld was a lonely, dismal place. Trowa was rarely invited up to Romafeller to visit and intruding unasked was rude. He couldn't kidnap a few mortals the dally there in the Underworld with him for though he was its ruler, the very nature of the Underworld itself killed anything mortal that entered it regardless of its master's wishes (Midii didn't count since she wasn't mortal). Even though he spent a good deal of his time in the mortal realm, it was vanishingly likely that any of them would invite _him_ to any feasts or revelries. Even his mortal worshipers were a very dreary lot, they liked to shave their heads and walk about barefoot chanting dour laments. He had few friends and no real companions. Was it any wonder then that he had… Stubbornly she pushed that thought aside before it could blossom into a full realization in her mind.

Midii didn't want to understand him, but it appeared that she had been born into this world with the unfortunate gift of being able to see both sides. She was stubborn however and in this case (because of the situation she was in) just because she could see both sides didn't mean she had to look at them. Whenever understanding tried to rear its moderate head Midii promptly tied it up and stuffed it back into a closet in her mind. She didn't want to understand him! Understanding him would mean coming to see his sorry plight, which in turn would lead to her feeling sorry for him, which in turn would lead to her trying to alleviate some of his sorrow, which then meant spending more time with him, which would lead to her getting to know him, which would likely mean coming to care for him and after that it would all be over with and she'd never leave this place… so she obstinately turned a blind eye to the situation she was faced with. She told herself that she wasn't actually enjoying the evenings she spent with him playing Strategem; that she was just there with him at those times so _she_ wouldn't have to be alone. She told herself that she hadn't turned his entire wardrobe pink so that he would seek her out and she could see the look on his face (well, actually that part had been kind of fun!). She told herself that all of the little kindnesses he showed her; giving her equal power to work within his realm, setting aside his work to tour her around some ancient ruins in the mortal realm, creating new flowers for her every day, sending her lost music of the ancients to play for her in the garden, creating beautiful illusions out of the mists of stories lost to time and battles fought long ago… she told herself that all of the things he did for her were tricks to win her favor and not done out of a simple desire to see her smile. She brushed the thoughts of her dour abductor aside to concentrate on the task that would allow her to visit her home in Romafeller once again, and sternly told herself that she was not going to worry about what Trowa was going to do while she was away.

"The last of the invitations have been sent," the ghostly form of her calligrapher informed her.

"Well then, in three days we shall have a party here," she said and went to check of the ornaments she'd arranged to have set up in the dining hall.

The party had begun nearly an hour ago and invitation- bearing visitors dressed in their darkest colorful finery had descended en masse upon his formerly quiet new home. Midii had declared that the fete she was throwing for him would be a masquerade; so all of the guests (as per the stipulation) had worn their costume finery with a mask. Many of the attending gods and goddesses wore themed costumes based on their realms and specialties but there were also those who seemed to have chosen their finery for the evening based on its outlandish design as well. Ribbons and feathers, furs and streamers, glitters, beads, illusory extra appendages; anything and everything an imagination could conjure was out on the crystal floor with water patterns shining up through it eddying through he patterns of a waltz played by ghostly musicians.

Trowa, despite the fact that he ruled the realm, had not gotten out of it; Midii had picked his mask out personally and had sent a Shadowed One to ensure that he wore it. It was kind of her, really, but how precisely was the Lord of Death's Realm suited to a clown mask? Even if it was only half a mask, it was so… cheerful. It seemed at odds with his expressionless face and his usual costume of his shadowed cloak. As a concession to the festivities he had worn a cloak that was a little different from the one he usually wore; instead of a dark cloak of shifting shadows this one held starlight in its folds, tiny points of silvery white that peeked out here and there when he moved. The suit and breastplate he wore beneath his cloak was the night-armor that he had fought the Daemon Wars in so many centuries ago (it was the nicest thing he owned for all of the rest of his wardrobe were the clothes he habitually wore to work).

He stood off to one side, admiring the view for the place was really very different this evening. The grand hall which was serving as the grand ball room for the evening was a whirl of light and dark; the water-shadows dancing up through the bare wisp of mist Midii had left in place played against the velvets and silks and jewels of the guests creating an odd symphony of color. Guests chatted amiably with one another, greeting him cheerfully in passing (they didn't seem to expect more out of him than a nod of acknowledgement thank the powers). Gods and goddesses grazed at the long table in the dining hall to the left of the grand hall set with foods Midii had ordered from the mortal realm (eating food from deaths realm was tantamount to having to stay there) and in the long hall alcoved off on the right side of the grand hall Midii had set up a troupe of spirits that had been Players while they had been alive and were happily enacting various plays to entertain those not minded to eat, dance or mingle out in the gardens. The window-wall in the back of the great hall at the top of a small marble staircase led out into the gardens that Midii had made Trowa create flowers for. He was surprised; everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves!

"Trowa!" Quatre called over to him. He detached himself from a knot of adoring admirers and walked over to where Trowa stood observing the churning sea of dancers. The God of Love and Light was dressed this evening as one of his own mythical winged arrow-bearers; thankfully he wore a full robe instead of just the loincloth (much to the disappointment of his adoring fans Trowa was sure).

"Hello Quatre," he said when his friend had reached his side.

"I never thought I'd see the day that _you_ would throw a fete here in this place; usually just getting you to attend one is like pulling teeth," Quatre said jovially.

"I thought that Midii might be lonely for company," Trowa replied. He was glad when Quatre didn't say any number of the things he could have said to that such as "yes, I can see how carrying her off and trapping her here might make her a little wary of yours," or "well, I'm sure those spirits in the River of Souls over there make marvelous companions for a girl." Instead, Quatre only said

"Speaking of Midii, where is she? She _is_ going to attend right?"

Trowa wasn't paying attention however; his gaze and attention were riveted to a slim figure atop the stairs leading in from the gardens. Instead of her usual practical layers of stola, Midii wore a true gown to the party. The full skirt was divided in front into two panels; with the overskirt panel being gathered into opulent folds of plush black velvet that shone white in a trick of the light in that way that black velvet always did. The under panel looked like it was made of starlight; thousands of tiny multifaceted diamonds were sewn into the cloth to catch and play with the light as she moved, winking in and out of the folds of black velvet. The torso of the dress was a black satin corselet sewn with tiny beads of obsidian that winked subtly in the dancing patterns of water-shadows flitting through the air. Elbow length black gloves of satin edged in sparkling diamonds encased her hands which held a simple mask of black satin. Her golden hair was swept up on top of her head strung with strings of black diamonds and jewels. All of that alone would have been lovely enough, but somehow from the back of the dress sprouted two sheer black wings; structured like a faerie's wings but with water-patterns in small glittering diamonds.

She spotted him and Trowa watched, utterly mesmerized, as she drifted over to him. With a pang, he noted that Midii was frowning however. Part of him didn't care… she could frown all she liked if he could just watch her move about in her pretty dress. She reached his side, looked up into his face and said

"You're wearing a suit of armor to a fete?"

Trowa blinked. What was wrong with that? Midii sighed upon seeing his obviously clueless look and said

"It won't do. The cloak is fine, but the rest…"

Suddenly his armor started to writhe and blur around him, vaporizing into a thick black cloud. Too late he remembered that he had granted her power in his under-realm the equal of his own to affect whatever changes she wished… that included, apparently, even the clothes he had on. He braced himself for another appearance of the pink tights (why would such a mischievous woman waste an opportunity to embarrass him publicly?) but was pleasantly surprised when the mist coalesced into pressed velvet slacks, a waistcoat of black satin, a grey silk shirt shot through with threads of silver, and a matching cravat with seed-sized diamonds sewn into the cloth. The cloak settled about his body from silver epaulets on his shoulders.

Oh! He was now dressed to match her gown. How nice!

"You have impeccable taste," Quatre complimented her.

"Thank-you," she dimpled at him. Trowa surreptitiously took her arm in his. Midii glanced over at him, but to his delight, didn't pull her arm away! It didn't last long however…

"Midii!" called the strident tones of the Queen of the Gods, Lady of Romafeller, Protector of Women, and Goddess of Nature; Lady Une.

"Milady!" Midii rushed off to embrace her (former) mistress, and Trowa was treated to the sight of seeing her hasten in her beautiful dress again. He could watch her entrancing figure all night. On the downside of the viewing arena, he was also treated to the sight of Lady Une's formidable glare. Now _there_ was something that could make death itself turn and run. Thankfully, before she could wander over to Trowa and begin tearing bloody strips off from him she was joined by her beloved Lord Trieze. Trieze put a gently restraining hand on Lady Une's arm and said softly

"Lady… don't forget that we are guests here and must act accordingly."

In an unheard-of event, it looked like Lady was truly considering ignoring the words of her beloved Trieze! She growled deep in her throat, and her glare intensified, but with a final narrowing of the eyes she backed off, taking her (former) handmaiden with her. Trowa watched while Lady Une examined Midii minutely, obviously looking for any signs of mistreatment on his part. She questioned her too but Midii could only assure Lady Une that she had been well cared for by him and his servants. She had no real grounds to reclaim her handmaiden (as Protector of Women) on charges of mistreatment and Trowa smirked just a little as she leveled another glare at him for thwarting her.

Trowa strolled over to Midii's side once more to face the unholy wrath of her former mistress with his usual stoic demeanor. Truth be told he was a little amused at Lady's growing frustration with the fact that she was essentially powerless because this was his realm and he held all of the cards. Yes, he had stolen Lady's handmaiden and now he was getting away with it right before her very eyes and there was nothing she could do about it! He wasn't a petty man, or one that found amusement in the discomfort of others, but he couldn't help feeling a little tickled by the situation. He couldn't resist twisting the knife a little by retaking Midii's arm in his own and meeting Lady's disapproving look with a blank implacable expression. Trieze shook his head a little; half in admiration of Trowa's bravery, half in amusement. He saw the humor in the situation too!

"My beloved Lady," Trieze said, deflecting her anger a little. "Let us have a dance."

The Lady, unable to resist a request from her precious beloved, allowed herself to be drawn off into the crowd swirling in unison. Trowa looked over at Midii hopefully, trying to gauge whether she might humor him with something he wanted. He decided she might go for it because the atmosphere of the party was so light.

"Will you dance with me?" he requested. She took a moment to seriously consider it. At last she said

"I suppose. It would be a waste of all of this effort not to have one dance."

Perhaps Trowa was simply being optimistic but it sounded to him like her answer didn't carry its usual caustic tone to it and the reluctance in her reply sounded only half-hearted. Before she could change her mind Trowa turned her to face him, placed his hand at her velvet-clad waist and drew her closer to him before whirling her out into the crowd in time to the music. In all of his centuries of servitude to his duties his heart had never felt as light as it did that night when he held her close and they swirled about in the patterns of the waltz. He carefully memorized her every look and feature for he knew that in the morning he would have to let her go for three interminable weeks; but for that time she was there in his arms and he felt bliss.

Midii woke a little groggily; she always had difficulty waking up when it was dark outside and that went double for when it was raining; Trowa's Underworld had that dim, directionless light that simulated daylight filtered through heavy black stormclouds. It made it difficult for Midii to wake up, and with her drifting purposeless existence in this place she liked to spend her mornings lazing about in bed. Not this morning however; this morning she was to leave this place for an entire month of freedom in her home! A whole month gone from this dark cheerless place (that she had arranged so that it was not-so-dark and not-so-cheerless). A whole month away from its master as well; no more hearing the sound of his soft footfall in the great hall and bolting for her quarters or any other place to hide… okay, to be completely honest with herself she didn't hide away from him as much as she had at first after he'd taken her away from her home, but still, she wouldn't have to spend evenings in his grim company as the only other living being in the realm!

Midii practically sprang out of bed in her eagerness to be off and on her way. She paused however, as she stood in front of her closet; should she pack? It was likely that she'd have her former clothing provided for her in Romafeller after all… but one didn't go on a journey and not pack. She'd just take the important things; a silver comb inlaid with black diamonds, a matching brush, her favorite hair-jewels… Maybe she should take one or two outfits just in case they had packed away her stola's. It would be inconsiderate just to show up with nothing after all. Midii ordered her attendant Shadowed One to take out the stola of black spidersilk with the diamond shoulder-clasps and the light black satin gown with the sash in silver-and-onyx patterns.

She debated with herself… and took the glowing silvery-white necklace that Trowa had given to her in gratitude for her efforts on his behalf. Really, she had become quite attached to it in the short time she'd had it, and so it wasn't because he'd made it just for her at all! That was her loophole and she was sticking to it! She dressed herself in one of her more practical silk stola's, twisted her hair up with a simple comb of obsidian for the journey, and slung the light silk bag for the trip across her back. Her footfalls tapped lightly down the wing leading out into the garden towards the Great Hall and front entrance as she hurried to wait for her ride to Romafeller in the front courtyard. Trowa was already there awaiting her, his steed stood solidly nearby, the chariot was once again attached to him. Odd, Trowa always rode the beast saddled when he went out on his errands; the only time he'd ever bothered with a chariot was when he had taken her to the mortal realm with him.

"I ordered the chariot prepared to take you to Romafeller," he said as she approached him.

"I thought that one of the gods from Romafeller would come to collect me," she said in confusion.

"None can enter my realm without my permission and although I sent an invitation Lady Une is currently not answering, or likely even opening, any mail from me," Trowa explained sheepishly. "Still, I am a god of my word and so here you are. Mortis will see you safely to your destination."

"Oh, thank you," she said, uncertain of what else to say. Trowa handed her up onto the platform of the chariot but retained her hand when she turned to go.

"If you should ever need me," he said. "For anything at all; call for me and I will come."

"Ah… that's nice of you to offer," she said a little awkwardly.

"You shouldn't make the trip without a cloak to keep you warm at least," he said in concern. "Some of the Divine Realms are quite cold." A shadowed cloak materialized in his left hand and he deftly swirled it about her, fastening the brooch and setting the hood and cowl in place.

Midii couldn't help smiling a little at that as she pressed her palm fondly to his cheek. He was acting a bit like a protective mother seeing her only child away for the first time but it was sweet of him to worry for her.

"I'll be alright," she couldn't help reassuring him. She was going to be gone from him for a whole month after all, and the journey from the Underworld to Romafeller crossed through all of the Divine Realms, even the not-so-savory ones. She could allow him a fond good-bye. It wasn't as if she was really feeling sad to part from him; she was just making sure he wouldn't decide to drop by Romafeller and ruin her vacation that was all. So there; it wasn't because his emerald eyes looked so morose to see her up in his chariot and leaving him.

"Mortis is trained for war," Trowa said, sounding more as though he was reassuring himself than he was cheering her. "He will protect you."

"I'll see you in three weeks Trowa," she said, signaling Mortis to start on the journey. She actually nearly said "take care while I am gone" but stopped herself in time. Goodbyes always seemed to do that to her. Yes, that was it.


	4. Chapter 4

The journey passed uneventfully; it wasn't nearly so frightening to pass through the Divine Realms as it had been galloping through the dark Portal that first time. Trowa had his own personal passage as God of the Underworld that would take him quickly from any place directly through to his own realm; that had been the long dark tunnel she'd raced through during that first terrifying ride. Any other god or goddess going to or from his realm had to take the long route through the Divine Realms.

Some of the places were very strange indeed; the Dream Realm in particular was… odd; none of the images and creature floating here and there through the ever-changing landscape made any sense to her. There was a Realm that made her glad that Trowa had given her a cloak to wear, for it was completely frozen over with a howling, snow-laden wind shrieking past her ears. Many of the Divine Realms were modeled after places in the mortal realms, there were even divine realms that were copies of some of the ruins that Trowa had taken her to; she wondered idly if any of the gods and spirits worshipped by those ancient civilizations still resided in those realms, just floating there in an endless limbo with no one to remember or adore them.

Midii was left alone with the quiet of her thoughts as the chariot she rode in carried her farther and farther away from the Underworld. Try as she might she couldn't stop thinking about the fete the evening before. Certainly she'd been looking forward to departing from the Underworld and returning to her home in Romafeller but that morning Midii had felt a small twinge of what one might mistake for reluctance. It had happened when she'd seen his face looking so forlorn and trying to hide it. Midii couldn't help but contrast that subtle expression with the tender and adoring look he'd worn while he had walzed with her the evening before. He wasn't precisely the life of the party, but in his own quiet way she found his company intellectually stimulating. He'd certainly had a subtle bit of fun taunting her Lady the evening before and Midii had felt her loyalties divided for the first time; on the one hand Lady Une was her Lady but on the other Midii had never seen the Queen of Romafeller so thoroughly stymied before. Midii had to admit that Trowa had a fine mind, and a sense of humor however subtle it was.

It was a slippery slope to stand on. Allowing herself to love one thing about him opened the possibility that she would eventually come to love all things about him. However hard she fought it Midii could not help but see his quiet strength, his keen mind, his hidden kindness. She liked his quiet voice, his gentle entreaties, his somber tenderness when no-one was looking. She liked the way he looked at her; like she was the only person in the room. She wouldn't even admit to herself that a good part of the reason she had so carefully chosen that dress she'd worn for the fete was so that he could admire how pretty she looked and lavish her with those mesmerized emerald eyes. Maybe it was she who was falling under his spell because last night had felt like a dream to her.

Midii roughly shook herself out of it. Truly it was time to return to her senses! She couldn't let some silly dance completely turn her head. Trowa was her enemy and she couldn't afford to forget that. Not even when her heart had seemed to skip a beat when he had first taken her into his arms to walz with him. She was going to return home and she intended to forget all about him while she was there!

At last the chariot stopped outside of the hallowed halls of Romafeller, neighing shrilly to announce its presence. Hilde, one of Lady Une's other handmaidens blinked a little at the sight of her and then promptly ran screaming to embrace her. She'd always gotten on well with Hilde, who was one of the few handmaidens to look past Midii's roots and position of favor to see the real girl inside. She was also one of the few handmaidens who actually did a lot of the real work of a handmaiden; most of the others just attended Lady in the bath and her dressing room and called it a done task. Hilde and Midii were her social secretaries, personal assistants, her executive officers, her mail-sorters, and whatever else the Lady required of them. Midii found tears springing up in her eyes as she embraced her nominal best friend, both of them babbling at each other from joy and relief.

Lady Une emerged from the front gate of her palace and hastened over to where Midii stood hugging onto Hilde and still babbling. Lady Une never hurried, but her pace was much swifter than it normally was, and her elegant, calm face was in rare lines of happiness and relief. Her two loyal handmaidens sank swiftly to their knees in an elegant curtsey before their Lady and waited with their stola's pooled about them to be bid to rise.

"You have returned I see," she noted, her voice as calm and regal as it ever was as she signaled them both to rise and attend to her. "Good. I knew he would do the wise thing and obey me."

"I have returned for a month only my Lady," Midii said, rising from her curtsey. The Queen of the Gods stiffened and turned to face her young handmaiden, her face, usually so cool and elegant was marred slightly by a frown.

"What was that?" she demanded softly, with a slight edge in her voice.

"I have returned for a month only Lady Une," Midii replied. "Trowa and I made a deal; he would allow me to come back home as a reward for arranging matters for the fete but it would be a temporary reprieve only."

Lady Une dismissed it with a wave of her hand and a sniff.

"Well then," she said, sounding satisfied. "It is of no moment. He may be God of the Underworld, but we are no longer in the Underworld; here in Romafeller I hold sway. He cannot coerce you from me in my own kingdom and I have no intention of allowing him to carry you off a second time. Come along."

Midii hung back however.

"I gave him my Oath," she said reluctantly. "As a condition of my release here I promised him my most solemn vow before all of the Powers that I would return to him in the Underworld in a months time. An Oath before the Powers lady, as we both know, cannot be broken or it will make me Foresworn."

Even the powerful Lady Une shuddered a little at that. To be Foresworn was to be reviled among all of the gods and even the mortals. To be foresworn was to be marked for all of eternity, to be denied all that made one divine and to have the company of the gods and spirits closed to one for all time. Such a fate was horrifying to one who would see eternity.

"But it was an oath made under duress," Lady Une protested.

"It still counts," the voice of her husband said softly from behind her as he wrapped both arms around her waist.

"Yes, whether it was a condition of my temporary freedom or not, I still made the choice of my own free will," Midii said. "Still… at least I get that much time away from that realm. You've no idea how happy I am to see the sun again!"

"I think I can imagine," Hilde said sympathetically. "Lady told me all about what the Underworld was like. Did he really force you to be his servant?"

Midii looked at Hilde in some surprise. It appeared that gossip, in that way that gossip always did, had skewed the state of matters just a touch.

"His servant?" Midii said, looking in inquiry over at Lady Une.

"You did say that you had been made to arrange the fete so I took it to mean that you had been forced into the position of chatelaine of the household," Lady Une said gently. "You poor thing, forced to slave in that dreary place!"

"It's not like that at all," Midii protested. "It's true that I took command of the estate and arranged for the gala but that's only because I made a deal with him. I'd get to come back here for a month if I prepared his creepy place for a masquerade. Otherwise he's treated me very well."

"This is the same guy that kidnapped you and dragged you away from your home and down into the Underwold with him; we are talking about the same guy right?" Hilde said, a little uncertainly.

"Yes," Midii said a little defensively. Trowa might not be on her good list right now but being back in Romafeller had made her feel a bit more charitable towards him. Besides, no one else was sticking up for him and Midii had always had a soft spot for the under-dog. Her contrary nature had always made her inclined to play devils advocate.

"Let me say it again," Hilde said slowly with great emphasis. "He kidnapped you. He dragged you down to his underworld. He defied your Lady."

"But he never harmed me," Midii defended while wondering at the same time just why in the name of everything holy she was defending him when it was _she_ who was the injured party.

"Why are you defending him?" Lady Une demanded. "After all of the injuries he's done to the honor of both of us; kidnapping you and defying me…"

"I wonder which one makes you angrier," Trieze said softly. Lady Une glared in his direction.

"I've been worried about my handmaiden of course!" she snapped. "He has her trapped down there doing the divine powers only knows what to her and I'm powerless to stop him in his own realm… I've been worried sick about Midii!"

"She _has_, you know," Hilde whispered, sotto voce, to Midii. "She doesn't show it on the outside but as her personal assistant and the one who knows her best besides you or Trieze, I can tell. She doesn't sleep as well as she should, and her feed is off. Not even Treize can console her."

"Oh, poor Lady," Midii said, sympathetically. She now felt a little guilty for what small pleasure she was able to derive in her time in the Underworld, and for comparing her old duties here with her new powers there so unfavorably. What a trial her Lady had been through. Midii hastened to reassure her mistress that everything was fine.

"Oh Lady you don't need to worry," Midii said, rushing to her side to sit her down and comfort her. "Trowa may seem cold and emotionless but he's very honorable and deep down he really cares for me. He'd never hurt me, I just know it! He treats me with all honor; grants me privacy in my own suite, and readily gives me anything I ask for… well except my freedom, of course. I think he'd pull down the moon if I asked him to. The only thing he ever asks of me is for the occasional walk around the garden; he's never once even hinted at forcing me. He's just not that kind of man."

"He stole you away by force," Lady Une pointed out. "How am I to know he won't force something else that he wants from you?"

"Trowa may have kidnapped me but he's a good man; just-- lonely. He's been stuck down there for so long that it's like death and killing is all he knows anymore."

All the more reason for me to be concerned," Lady Une replied. "I too thought I knew him as well as any. We'd fought together long ago in the Daemon Wars but this sudden seizure of my handmaiden took me by surprise. Why didn't he at least attempt to court you honorably?"

"Lady," Hilde said, giving her a skeptical look. "This is the Lord of Death's Realm we're talking about. Could you see him courting anybody? Besides, it's not exactly as if he could hop up here every few days. His duties keep him pretty busy."

"And in addition to that, my beloved but overprotective Lady," Treize interjected smoothly. "Is your fearsome reputation. Be honest; if he'd come up here to court Midii with honorable intentions would you have let him anywhere near her?"

"Of course not!" Lady gasped, outraged at the very idea. "I would've…"

"Told him to take himself off and guarded Midii all the more jealously," Trieze finished for her. She glared but couldn't argue, knowing he was right.

"Are you saying that Midii's kidnapping is somehow _my_ fault?" she demanded dangerously. "That _I_ am somehow to blame for his reprehensible behavior in carrying Midii away from me practically right under my very nose?"

"Of course not my beloved Lady," Treize said silkily. "But you must admit, you do tend to keep your maidens rather close."

"I admit nothing," Lady Une growled. "And Midii has been kept here in Romafeller for her entire life, she's too sheltered to handle going out anywhere else."

"Ummm…" Midii interjected reluctantly; stung by honesty to tell her Lady the truth. "That's not entirely accurate. Trowa… Trowa took me with him one day when he went about his errands in the mortal realm."

"He what!" Lady Une demanded, shocked and appalled. "Has he no sense at all! Oh, my poor dear, I can't imagine how terrible it must have been for you!"

"It wasn't so bad," Midii said. "Okay well, parts of it were; but I only fainted once and that was because of all of the blood and that awful screaming."

Lady une looked even more horrified upon hearing that. But Midii went on without noticing.

"But then after that we spent the most wonderful day together. He showed me around all of these ruins that were so ancient that they'd been forgotten by the mortals and he cast illusions about with his power to show me what they had looked like when thy were new and people were still living in them. He's very detailed you know…"

Hilde, that fun-loving inveterate romantic, got this sly look on her face; like a cat that had found the cream. But since they were in the distraught presence of their Lady she held her tongue and saved her teasing for later.

"What an ordeal for you to endure," Lady Une said sympathetically. "Here, go to your quarters and get some rest."

Midii nodded obediently; she was a little tired. Hilde walked with her to her room even though she knew the way there; they had both seen Trieze subtly nod her out and took the hint that he wanted to be alone with his Lady.

"So," Hilde started as soon as they were alone out of earshot. "He treats you very well does he?"

"Yes," Midii admitted.

"That stola you're wearing is raw spider-silk, certainly a much nicer garment than the ones you wear here," Hilde continued.

"It is," Midii agreed neutrally.

"And he let you have the run of his entire estate?"

"He did," Midii said shortly.

"Sounds choice," Hilde enthused. "He dotes on you, how romantic!"

"It's dark down there," she said, her voice quavering a little. "It's like being trapped in a cellar."

Hilde's face looked instantly apologetic.

"I'm sorry Midii," she said, reaching over to hug her again. "But from what you said to Lady Une, I thought you might be coming to like it there and just didn't want to tell her so. I should have known better. Well then I think he's terrible for doing something like this to you; sticking a poor girl away from the sunlight is not good for her complexion and just look at you, you're so pale!"

Hilde had gone from lightly teasing to outrageously indignant in no time flat in the manner of best friends. Midii smiled wanly and looped her arm through hers.

"Let's go out into the garden instead," Midii said. "I want to be in the sun!"

"I don't blame you," Hilde said, still sounding indignant.

"And I'll tell you all about it," Midii said as they seated themselves at their favorite fountain near Treize's rose patch of sea-roses. And she went on to detail to her best friend the terror of her kidnapping, Trowa's command that she be happy in his dreary place, the strange silent realm she found herself in, the Shadowed Ones that had attended to her, the awful morning she'd spent attending him in the Mortal Realm followed by the surprisingly fun afternoon they had had together, the deal she'd made with him, her preparations for the masquerade, the party itself, and finally her journey to Romafeller. Hilde had interjected with comments throughout the narration, she'd been appalled at her kidnapping, a little envious of the freetime she'd gotten in the Underworld plus the clothes and attendants, sympathetic that she'd had to spend all of her time in such a dismal environment, utterly aghast at the kinds of horrors she'd faced in the mortal realm but when Midii told her about the rest of their day together and her evenings in the library with him since then and then how they'd danced together on the evening of the masque she looked a little uncertain.

"Are you sure you don't like him?" Hilde asked dubiously.

"How can I?" Midii retorted. "He stole me away from the only home I've ever known and then made me stay down there in that dismal hole of his!"

Midii flashed from outraged to calmer and even a little sympathetic as she said softly

"But it's just that… I can't help but see how very sad and lonely he is. What would you do Hilde?"

"I'd hate him for it and refuse to talk to him," Hilde shrugged. "But you've always been more fair-minded than I am."

"Well I'm not _that_ fair-minded," she said firmly but even Hilde could hear the note of uncertainty in her voice. She decided against pursuing the matter however, poor Midii was confused enough as it was.

Then let's not even think about him for the rest of your stay here," Hilde said instead and she began to style her best friends hair with the hair jewels she'd brought with her and they spent a pleasant afternoon discussing lighter topics. Hilde told her how much she'd missed having her nominal partner around to help with the real work of being Lady Une's handmaiden; there had been two unsuccessful attempts to train one of those other bits of fluff that Lady Une called handmaidens into Midii's position that had ended in near disasters.

"I have a secret," Hilde confessed at last. Midii was her best friend as well as someone who could be trusted to keep a confidence.

"A secret? You?" Midii said, surprised. Hilde was so open, she'd never kept a secret before to Midii's knowledge.

"Yes," Hilde said, her eyes dancing with excitement. "Duo's been courting me in secret; he wants me to run away with him. In fact he's a little put out with Trowa right now because his kidnapping of you has made Lady Une all the more fanatically watchful. But they don't call him the trickster god for nothing; he always finds a way to see me. Sometimes he even sneaks in through Heero's Realm."

"The Realm of Dreams?" Midii said, surprised. It was hard to sneak past Heero's security.

"It's our secret meeting place. He's so wonderful; I want to be his friend forever."

"His friend?" Midii questioned. "You two sound like you're more than friends."

"Duo's got enough femme lovers," Hilde said firmly. "I've no intention of being another conquest. But he doesn't have nearly enough friends, probably because he's played so many tricks on different people that everyone's wary about being around him. You see if I'm his lover then I'm just another girl, but if I'm his friend that makes me special."

"Are you okay with that?" Midii said dubiously. "I mean, even if you are special as his friend it also means he'll never see you as a girl. Can you be in love with a guy and forever have it unrequited?"

"That's better than having my heart broken when it's over," Hilde replied. "It'll be fine to be his friend, I genuinely like being with him. He's a lot of fun."

"If that's the way you want it then I guess I'm happy for you," Midii said, still a little doubtful. Hilde smiled agreeably but Midii could see the small shadows of doubt hovering about her and she knew that her friend was not so blasé as she made herself sound.

Out of courtesy Midii changed the subject and the two of them went on to discuss their Lady and the changes that had occurred there in Romafeller since Midii had left. It was the first truly pleasant afternoon Midii had spent in quite a while, but she couldn't help but feel deep, deep down that there was something lacking about it.

She had only been gone for a week and Trowa already felt her absence like a physical feeling. Despite her reluctance to be there, Midii's presence had filled the palace with a lightness and life, like a beautiful song that drifted through the rooms and lifted his heart upon hearing it. Without her the realm felt cold and dead once more. Trowa drifted in and out of the rooms as if searching for her; perhaps it was only the habit he had grown of searching her out every time he came home and even though he knew he would not see her for another two weeks he could not help but hope she would be there somewhere if he looked hard enough.

He was moping, and he knew he was moping, but he couldn't help it. Everything was so empty and lifeless without her. The landscape was so barren and he could not even look upon her beautiful face to brighten his world. He had thought many times about simply taking Mortis up to Romafeller just so he could see her again, but he was stopped by two things; firstly Lady Une was still very upset with him and if he entered Romafeller he would be in her realm and at her mercy, secondly he did not wish to ruin Midii's hard-won reprieve and he knew well that he would be persona non grata. Still, he missed her so.

Trowa was surprised when there came a soft flash of multi-colored light and suddenly his sister stood before him in the gardens he'd so often walked in with Midii. His elder sister Catherine, Goddess of Joy, was joyful, vivacious and overprotective, in that order. Right at that moment however she looked cross with him (which did not happen often). Without preamble she said

"What is all of this news I hear about you stealing Lady Une's favorite handmaiden from out of Romafeller and holding her here against her will?"

Trowa didn't fear many things; he was the Lord of Death's Realm after all, and he'd been a soldier from the day he'd been Born, but the displeasure of his elder sister was one of the few things in this world he had a weakness for. There was no hope for it, he was going to have to be honest with her.

"I also heard you've been keeping her here as your slave," Catherine continued.

Trowa started in surprise. He would never do that to Midii!

"I have not!" he said, startled. Catherine's anger abated a little, not much, but a little. She, of all of the gods, had always had a soft spot for her soft-spoken and lonely younger brother.

"I'm listening," she said after a moment. She seated herself on a nearby bench gesturing her brother to sit beside her. "Love what you've done with the place by the way; I'd always thought you should have something here besides that creepy Whisper Gallery."

"I built it for her," Trowa said.

"Go on, tell me everything and don't leave anything out," Catherine ordered.

"I visited Romafeller for Trieze's presentation ceremony for Mariemaia," he began. "And while I was there I saw Midii and fell in love with her."

"At first sight? Are you sure Quatre didn't have anything to do with this?"

Trowa shook his head.

"He wouldn't, especially not to his best friend," he said. "Any road, I knew very well that Lady Une would never part with her and that if I let on that I had an interest in Midii I'd never get to see her again; so I waited a little while, built this place to make her comfortable, and then while no-one was paying attention I stole up to Romafeller and made off with her."

"Trowa! I'm surprised at you!" Catherine scolded. "I disappear for a month to attend a revelry in my honor in my patron city and something like this happens in my absence."

"It was the only logical course of action for me," he defended. "I couldn't be with her any other way."

"And how does she feel about all of this?" Catherine demanded.

"She certainly wasn't happy with me," Trow said. "Especially at first."

"And now?" Catheirne inquired.

"She seems to be warming up to me a little." He went on to describe their afternoon together, and their evenings playing Strategem, and the deal he'd made with her to arrange the fete and all of the little things he'd noticed about her and a slight description of his campaign to win her over. Catherine shook her head and laughed herself silly to hear him describe his idea of courtship in such militaristic terms. Only Trowa would see love as a battlefield!

"It sounds to me, little brother, that you could use a little hint about the nature of love and since Quatre isn't cluing you in I suppose it's up your big sister," Catherine said. "Despite the old saying that love and war are often one and the same there is a very significant difference."

"And what's that?" he asked.

"In war, it's about one side conquering the other," she explained. "It's about strength versus weakness."

Trowa nodded his head in agreement. Cathy was a civilian; despite being the older sibling she had never fought in the Daemon Wars. Hers was a peaceful nature and disinclined to battle, but she had heard him speak of war and strategy often enough that she knew enough about it to make comparisons.

"But love is just the opposite," Cathy went on. "In love it's not about conquering your enemy, nor being conquered by them. In love both parties are vulnerable. You will have to open yourself up to being hurt in order for her to make the same sacrifice."

"Can I not bargain from a position of strength?" he questioned, disliking the tactical disadvantage of such a weakness. It was bad enough that his love for her had become a chink in his armor, worse that he would have to remove his breastplate to her completely and allow her the chance to run him through.

"No," Catherine said. "Not if you want her to love you in return."

"But why is it this way?" he asked.

"For both sides of the relationship to be equal, the risk must be equal," Catherine explained.

"She does not like me, let alone love me," Trowa argued. "Exposing my heart to her would be a good way to get it handed back to me on a platter."

"That may be, or it may be that she'll recognize the kind of strength it takes to bare such a weakness to her and admire you for it."

"Admiration is not love," Trowa said.

"It's a start," Cathy said back.

"Is there no other way to win her affections?"

"Well you've told me that she cannot be bought with gifts, nor charmed with kindness, but think back; those times when you showed something of yourself, of the man you are, what happened?"

Trowa thought back. The morning she had spent with him on his errands had made her cry but part of those had seemed to be tears of pity for him, which meant that she had been feeling sympathetic… a favorable emotion! Then the afternoon they had spent together he'd showed her his favorite hobby, that of history; and she had spent the evening with him of her own free will! He had then granted her freedom, equal power and a measure of sovereignty in order to arrange the fete and had been rewarded by a bevy of practical jokes worthy of the trickster; that didn't seem so favorable. But if he looked at it another way, the tricks could be said to be a form of playfulness. Friends played practical jokes on each other, perhaps she was comfortable enough with him to consider him a friend. That was favorable. Trowa made the connection; when she got past his shields a little and got to see the man he was under the intimidating specter of death she seemed to warm to him a little.

"I understand now," Trowa said solemnly. "In order for her to love me, she will first have to come to know me. It means exposing myself to weakness and I like that not… but she is worth any risk to me."

Catherine smiled comfortingly and patted his hand.

"That's the way it should be."

She kissed him on the cheek and rose to leave.

"Trowa, this doesn't mean she won't respond favorably to gifts," Catherine said as she wove her joy-light about herself in preparation to disappear once more. "Just see if she doesn't respond more actively to gifts that include thought and something of yourself in them. Think about it."

With that, she disappeared.

Midii had kept herself busy for the past week in Romafeller under Lady Une's protective and solicitous eye. Hilde hadn't been able to keep up with both her own job as attendant to Lady Une and do Midii's share of the work as well so things had fallen behind after they'd given up on trying to train one of the other ten brainless wonders. It was both a comfort and a trial to be returned to her accustomed duties. In her short time as the Lady of Deaths Realm she had perhaps gotten a little too comfortable with having her way in everything and arranging matters to her own satisfaction. Midii chafed a little at all of the restrictions on her time and the narrow confinements of her duties. Once again she didn't even get to place flower arrangements without the nod of Lady Une, nevermind wanting to remove that enormous statue of Trieze in all of his glory that adorned Lady Une's dressing room.

Midii discovered somewhat to her inner dismay that there were other things that she missed; her jokes on Trowa being among them oddly enough. He was so serious all of the time, seeing the look on his face when something unexpected happened had been amusing to her. And then there was the way he looked at her when he thought she wasn't watching him; it wasn't as though she _liked_ it, but really _any_ girl would be susceptible to someone who looked at her like she was the most beautiful woman in existence. She was always the first thing he sought out upon his return to his realm; not that there was much else to look for but hearing everyday that he had been waiting all day to look upon her face was beginning to have its effect on her. So it wasn't really _her_ fault that her mind kept wandering back to him.

She was a little (a very little mind you) concerned; Trowa was a fully grown adult but he spent too much time alone. And his duties were so ghastly. She was apprehensive that he was going to succumb to ennui without someone to talk to. Spending so much time alone in such a dismal environment wasn't healthy after all, so it definitely wasn't because she was worried about him personally!

Still, it wouldn't hurt anything to check on him. Just purely for her own peace of mind of course, because for all she knew that estate could have run itself into the ground without her there to supervise; that she knew darned well that it wasn't possible was aside of the point!

Midii silently snuck back to her private chambers. She was currently supposed to be sorting Lady Une's prayer-mail and discarding the calls of the faithless from the ones in true need of her services. Temple-prayers came in pink envelopes; they'd sacrificed two goats at least. Once within her familiar room she checked about for the presence of the invisible servants that periodically came in to clean up and put away (despite Midii's efforts to get them to leave things where she left them). There were none about, so she dimmed the lamps that they had lit and slunk into her closet, the darkest place in her entire suite.

"Shadowed One," she called softly into the gloom. She knew it was there; she had seen the occasional flicker of moving shadow each morning and discovered that her stolas had been neatened and laid out for her before she awakened.

"Shadowed One?" she repeated.

"Ysssssss…" a flit of darkness replied, the first sound she had ever heard out of one in fact. Most they were just there, silent, ubiquitous, laying everything out near to hand.

"I… Umm," she said, flushing a little and feeling unaccountably shy. The Shadowed Ones had no feelings good or bad, they did what they were bid and served so it was illogical that she would feel shy in front of one.

"I want to see him," she said softly. "Show him to me."

No need to specify the "him" in question; there was only one "him" it could be when making a request of a Shadowed One. The Shadowed One swayed a bit in the gloom, misted over then coalesced into a mirror of blackest obsidian. There in its surface she saw Trowa; he wore his cloak of shadows and his working armor, his face was a little averted as he bent to a task she could not see. Well, he looked fine enough…

She saw him let out a wistful little sigh and abruptly a horse's muzzle nudged at his shoulder, almost seeming to comfort him. He turned and patted the animal on the side of the neck, his demeanor softening a little with his silent companion. The God of the Underworld and his steed Mortis were the stuff of legend, so it would make sense that they would obviously have a close working partnership. He said something to the beast that did not carry through the image-only mirror and Midii discovered an odd pang at not being able to hear his voice.

Stupid, she thought to herself. This man was her enemy; just because she spent time with him didn't mean she liked him. Because she didn't; she didn't like him at all…

She banished the image, the mirror and the Shadowed One with an abrupt gesture and strode out of the room to attend to her proper duties like a good handmaiden should. Really, it was a waste of time to worry about him all alone in his miserable existence. She had work to do!

"I pray for glory, I pray for good crops, please bless my house with a bountiful harvest, please tell that odious jerk to get off my tail…" Midii muttered to herself, riffling through the morning's prayers to her mistress.

Lady Une was a popular goddess for a number of reasons; as Goddess of Nature she usually got the usual requests for bountiful harvests, protection from storms and earthshakes, and pleas for mercy when nature showed its teeth. Mortals were too short lived to realize that the short-term inconveniences they prayed against were necessary changes to maintain a greater balance. As Protectress of women she got her fair share of requests from the distaff for her protection against the stronger sex; not surprising, it was in many ways a man's world in the mortal realm. There were places where women were treated equally as it should be, but there were also lands where women were treated as chattel; unfortunately in those lands Lady Une held little sway and so could not properly visit her wrath upon them for their effrontery. She did what she could.

At the moment Lady Une had in mind the expansion of her influence into one of those impudent territories that dared mistreat its women with chains and beatings; all she was looking for was the right pretext. Usually she chose a mortal woman of unusual strength and character to be her chosen avatar. Lady would grant her person special powers which would enable the woman to do her work; her fist task would be to start an underground worship that would breed on discontent into an uprising, during which Lady would ruthlessly oust the reigning nature-spirits and assimilate their cults into her own worship. Once her power base was secure she was free to go about distributing her favors and meting out her justice until the stubborn men of that realm awakened to the fact the women were there to be their partners not their slaves.

Oh, Lady was sweet and gentle a good part of the time, but she was utterly ruthless when there was something she wanted. If Trieze ever asked a favor of her it was like setting the hounds of hell loose; she tear up anything that got in her way. It could be scary, usually Treize didn't ask. Midii didn't blame him one bit.

Midii was bent over her handful of Lady's missives as she walked down the hall to attend her morning dressing meeting and so she didn't notice when someone manifested directly in her presence. Didn't notice that was until she walked directly into her. Midii fell backwards, landing on her rump with an expression of surprise. That was odd, this hallway was almost always empty. She didn't immediately recognize the woman she was faced with either… some minor goddess or other to judge by her glow. Oddly enough she was frowning down at Midii fiercely while she picked herself up and gathered her Lady's mail. Midii couldn't recall anything she had done lately to offend anyone, she was the shyest and least offensive of Lady's handmaidens so the unknown goddess must be displeased about something else.

"Excuse me," Midii said quietly, bowing he way out of the Goddess's presence and continuing on her way.

"You're _not excused_," the goddess informed her sharply. "Come, I will talk with you."

"With me?" Midii said cluelessly. She'd never met the woman before in all of her life! Why did she suddenly feel the need to talk with Midii? She looked unhappy about something… Midii tried to think back to anything she might have said or done to offend the goddess but came up blank. Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity.

"I'm Midii, Lady Une's handm—"

"I know who you are," the goddess snapped at her. "Come along."

As a goddess she outranked Midii by, well, quite a bit, and Midii couldn't disobey a direct order from a powerful being but her Lady was expecting her and Midii couldn't shirk her duties either. She was caught between a rock and a hard place. But the Goddess already had her by the wrist and was dragging her off for her little chat so…

"Um… excuse me," Midii said a little timidly. "But my Lady is—"

"Lady Une has eleven other handmaidens," the goddess said unequivocally. "She can spare you for the morning."

Midii fell silent and let herself be dragged off. Really what could she do?

Why me? she wondered dismally. At least this one didn't seem inclined to force her away from her home. Indeed, the goddess sat her down beside a reflecting pool and seated herself beside Midii.

"Now," the goddess said by way of preamble. "I hear that you find my brother unsatisfactory in some way and I mean to find out why."

Midii blinked, now well and truly confused. Brother? Unsatisfactory? Huh?

"I'm sorry… who are you?" Midii asked. The woman blinked for a moment at this, taken aback, then her face cleared.

"I am Catherine," she said. "The Goddess of Joy."

"And who is your brother?" Midii persued, trying to get things straight.

"You've been staying with him for weeks," Catherine said. "Trowa, the God of the Underworld of course!"

Midii was taken aback. The Goddess of Joy and the God of the Underworld were related! What a weird combination. Catherine seemed so sociable and Trowa, well—wasn't.

"Oh," Midii said eloquently.

"What precisely is your problem with my brother," Catherine demanded directly.

Midii just stared at her for a moment as if she were incredibly dense. What was her problem with Trowa! Where did she want her to start?

"He kidnapped me," Midii said, stating the obvious. With dense people it was probably best to be direct.

"Okay…" Catherine said, nodding a little as if making a mental note of it. "Go on."

Midii stared again; there was something very odd about this situation.

"He forced me to stay in that dismal hole he calls a realm with him without any sunlight," Midii added.

"I see, and what else?"

"He insulted and defied my Lady," Midii replied.

"Is that all?"

"…"

Well, yeah, pretty much, she thought. He's nice to me, so those are really his only crimes, well that and his fashion sense. 

"He won't let me come home for good," Midii said at last, for good measure.

"So, that's all then? You're only mad because he kidnapped you and won't let you come home? You don't have a problem with Trowa as a person?" Cathy pressed.

Midii was brought up a little short by that.

"Ano… yes," she said, surprised to hear the admission emerge from her mouth. She knew at once however that it was truth. She didn't have anything against Trowa personally; in fact she even rather liked him… sort of. It was his actions that had made her have an aversion to him.

"Marvelous!" Catherine said. "I don't see the problem then!"

"The problem," Midii said acidicly. "Is that he kidnapped me from my home, makes me stay there in his dismal realm with him and won't let me come back where I belong!"

"But you're here now," Cathy pointed out, sounding a little cajoling.

"Only because I had to swear to him that I would return in order for him to let me go for even this long," Midii shot back.

"It's not so bad down there," Cathy said reasonably.

"Oh no? Why don't you live there then?" Midii replied. "Maybe then he wouldn't need company so badly he goes about stealing innocent handmaidens!"

"I can see you're upset, and I suppose that given your situation you have every right to be," Catherine said slowly.

You're darn right I do, Midii thought but didn't say out loud. It didn't matter; Catherine could probably read the thought on her face anyway.

"But can you honestly tell me," Cathy continued. "That after having spent some amount of time in his company, willing or not, that you feel nothing for him at all?"

Midii was a basically honest person and it wasn't in her nature to lie. She had been struggling wih the very same question for days herself; she knew she felt at least concern for him but she also knew that if she allowed herself to feel anything more for him that it would create problems for her. She was Lady Une's handmaiden; her place was with her lady. If she allowed herself to acknowledge his growing presence in her thoughts then it would only create pain for her when she finally did leave him to return home for good. She knew that she would too; nothing could withstand against a determined effort by Lady Une.

"Well?" Catherine pressed after watching Midii stare at her hands in silence for a few minutes.

"It doesn't matter," Midii said at last, deciding to sidestep the issue altogether.

"Of course it matters!" Cathy replied. "Why are you being so stubborn about this? Sure, he kidnapped you from your home. Okay, so he lives in a gloomy doom-castle. And fine, he's not precisely the life of the party. But none of that will matter if you let yourself see what a wonderful person he is inside. If you let that happen you'll be sure to love him, and love would make you happy."

"That's precisely what I'm afraid of!" Midii snapped, losing her patience at last. "Have you ever seen what happens to people who get in Lady Une's way? She'll tear bloody strips off from him in no time flat once she found a pretext to invade his realm. Nobody thwarts Lady Une. She'll get me back and Trowa will suffer for it."

"But he's willing to try simply because he loves you," Cathy argued. "Trowa doesn't care how angry your Lady gets with him as long as he can live with you beside him. He's willing to brave the most terrible and fearsome goddess in Romafeller just so that he can keep you near him. Would it be so bad to let him?"

"It's not that I don't see what a truly good man he is under all that grim silence, and it's not that I don't care about him," Midii said. "But it just can't work. I miss the sunlight too much when I'm down there and I worry about my lady too. I have responsibilities here, and Romafeller is my home."

"Home _is_ where the heart is," Cathy said, getting up to leave. "Think about it…"

And with that she flashed out of the room. Midii sighed to herself a little forlornely.

Why me? she wondered to herself. Truth to tell, the longer she spent away from Trowa the more she thought about him rather than less. She hadn't had the courage to go and find her Shadowed One and get another peek at how he was doing but that didn't mean she didn't think about him. There were times during the day where she would be arranging her lady's schedule when she'd catch herself absently listening for his footsteps in the hallway. It had become a habit for her. Or she'd be out sitting in the garden sorting through her Lady's mail when she'd find herself absently straining to catch his voice talking to his horse Mortis nearby. Of course this was Romafeller and he wasn't nearby.

Face it. Be honest with yourself Midii, she thought to herself. You miss him. 

The recent conversation with Catherine had rather brought matters to a head for her. She discovered that she no longer felt the desire to waste energy by spending so much time and effort ignoring things that were very difficult to ignore. Trowa was a good man; honest, hard-working, dutiful and kind (and he was handsome too). So what if he lived in the Underworld? It was still seriously creepy down there but the improvements she'd made around the estate made it bearable. Treize _had_ had a point; if Trowa had come to Lady Une openly with intent to woo her handmaiden away from her the Lady would have sent him on his way. So he'd kidnapped her, so what? He'd never mistreated her thereafter (excepting the fact that he wouldn't let her come back home). He'd even devised a way to get her out into the sunlight again but his stoic nature had blinded him to the fact that he had an awful job and one that would greatly disturb her. Once he realized that she found the unpleasant aspects of his occupation terrible he'd immediately taken measures to soothe away her fright and make her happy again.

Midii still resented (a little) the fact that she couldn't bring herself to hate him the way he deserved for taking her away from her home, but she decided then and there that resentment for someone she was growing to care for was a waste of her time and efforts. Lady Une had once told her a good piece of wisdom about holding grudges, she had said; "Midii, regrets are a waste of your time. They are the past crippling you in the present." Sage advice really, though the giver would probably be dismayed that Midii was going to take it to heart in _this_ situation.

Trowa was a good man and he deserved to be happy. Midii was coming to care for him, and really what was the harm in letting herself feel for him? If she went right on dwelling on this thing then she'd only be impinging upon her own happiness! She knew deep down that allowing herself to feel something for him besides resentment wasn't only just "making the best of a bad situation;" if she really opened her heart to him there was a good chance that she was going to feel something a great deal more meaningful than pity. Just look how much she'd grown to care for him while making a concentrated effort not to! If she removed that last barrier stopping her heart from having its own way her concern for him would most probably evolve into something very significant indeed.

So I guess it's settled then, she thought, quite surprised at herself and her own decision. A week ago if anyone had asked her if she'd ever make a choice like this of her own free will she'd have scoffed and told him to take himself off. Perhaps absence really did make the heart grow fonder.

"Shadowed One," Midii called quietly, knowing that no-one would be along to intrude on her solitude for a few minutes yet. Her own shadow cast by her body intercepting the path of the light suddenly stretched and flickered as her Shadowed One grew up from it. It hovered there, dancing, awaiting her orders.

"Fetch me a vase from the mortal realm," she orderd it. The thing flickered out and Midii walked out into the gardens. She wandered about the paths and fields that featured grand flower-sculptures, curtains of flowering vines and fountains of roses carefully selecting a blossom here, a bloom there. Midii was an old hand at flower arrangement and soon she had a bunch that was lively and pleasing to all the senses. A moment later the Shadowed One appeared bearing an exotic vase of blue crackled glass and she set the flowers in it and arranged them further to her satisfaction, cutting a stem here or moving a flower there. Satisfied she handed the vase over to the Shadowed One.

"Take this to Trowa, and be careful not to drop it or disarrange the boquet."

In a trice the Shadowed One disappeared. Midii smiled in satisfaction; flowers were just the thing to brighten up the Underworld. The recipient would be pleased too and she found oddly enough, that that pleased her as well. Feeling good, and well-pleased with herself, Midii wandered off to catch the last of the morning meeting she had missed, sorting mail as she went.


	5. Chapter 5

Trowa paced impatiently outside the front entrance of the estate, waiting for the ringing sound of hoofbeats from his steed. Midii's allotted time in Romafeller was at an end so he had sent the great warhorse to collect Midii from Romafeller the very instant that morning arrived. Even though he knew that she wouldn't arrive for another thirty minutes, at least, he couldn't seem to keep himself from pacing anxiously. He would have used his tunnel to collect her sooner as he had the first time but he had a feeling that if he tried it, Lady Une would have an army waiting for him. He would just have to wait for her and trust that she would come back.

He had been surprised a week ago to receive a bouquet of flowers from the Shadowed One he had sent to attend her in Romafeller. When he had asked the being whether they were from her, the creature, to his shock, had answered in the affirmative. Trowa couldn't help but smile on the inside about it. He was feeling hopeful. She'd sent him flowers; of her own free will no less! She'd given him a present! That was a positive sign indeed. Perhaps she'd had a change of heart while she'd been away. Trowa knew better than to count too much on having his fondest hope granted so easily so he'd decided to continue on with his campaighn.

His sisters advice and the boquet of flowers that Midii had sent him had given him an idea on his next move. He'd worked swiftly all week to have it ready for her by the time she returned. It had been difficult for him; life was after all quite inimical to death, but he had managed. He hoped that she liked her surprise. Trowa perked up at the sound of hoofbeats in the distance and straightened immediately in anticipation of seeing her again after what had felt like an eternity in her absence. When he caught that first sight of her, graceful in black finery and cloak smiling softly from the top of Mortis he felt his breath catch in his body. Trowa stood frozen while he watched her approach, trying to read her mood from her expression… she wasn't frowning! He'd expected her to be angry and resentful upon her return but she wasn't scowling at him!

Mortis pulled up beside Trowa and he looked up into her face. She was the most beautiful woman in the world to him, and he had missed her so much. It felt like he'd been waiting for centuries to see her again that now that she was there with him he wasn't sure what to say or do.

"Aren't you going to help me down?" Midii prompted. Trowa started into action, he'd been mesmerized by her beautiful face and the halo that seemed to shine off from her hair. He reached up around her waist and gladly took her weight in his arms as she dismounted. Impulsively (because she was there anyway and just because he could) he pulled her close for a quick hug.

"I missed you," he said softly. "Welcome back."

Midii didn't return the sentiment, but he hadn't expected her to. When he looked down at her face however her cheeks were pink again.

"I have a surprise for you," he said, leading her into the estate by her hands. He couldn't seem to let her out of arms reach after having been away from her for so long.

"A surprise?" she said, looking curiously at him. "What kind of surprise? It isn't anything weird is it? Nothing dangerous?"

"Nothing weird, nothing dangerous," he assured her. "Come. Come and see."

She smiled a little softly at him and gamely followed him into the building, through the great hall and up the steps to the garden beyond.

"That hall gets better every time I see it," Midii said, sounding satisfied with herself. "I did a good job in here."

"Close your eyes," he said. Midii looked at him suspiciously, but after a moment shut the lids over her blue crystal orbs and waited. Trowa passed a hand in front of her face for a moment but then led her through the glass doors and out into the gardens.

He had toiled long and hard to transform the dead, dark gardens of wrought iron and ivory into a paradise of light and flowers. Since even he coud not command that light shine from overhead there in the Underworld, Trowa had created a unique and beautiful solution. The flowers themselves gave off a soft luminescent glow; the living fabric of their petals was woven with softest moonlight; the edges of the flowerpetals and pistols in the middle shone with strands of stars, bright motes of light and color. The stems and leaves glowed a soft pale green along their pathways. There were long clear fronds that danced in the wind, the ends of which were tipped in tiny pin-pricks of light.

Getting the light and color to weave into a flower in that way had taxed his magical resources but the look on her face was worth it. She looked plainly and simply delighted. Well it was no surprise really, Romafeller was light all of the time and so there was no way that the realm could put on a light show like this one. Speaking of which…

"Look up," he coaxed.

Midii raised her gaze skyward and gasped at what she saw there. Motes of light and glowing fog had been combined together to create pictures of light that constantly moved about. Streaks of light in different colors created outlines; plain line-drawings or complex geometrics danced there in the night sky of his realm. Luminescent stars flowed this way and that trailing inside formations of glowing mist that shifted forms to create the shapes of people, scenes of nature or whatever else was needed to display a perfect image. Scenes from well-known stories and ballads created by mortals danced there in the sky above their heads, right then the scene displayed one of his finest battles against the Daemons; Cathy had said that he should share some of himself in the gift as well.

"Wow," she breathed, captivated by the wonder of it. Trowa felt a large surge of pardonable pride in his accomplishment, he wasn't exactly a creative genius but he had recalled how well she had liked it when he had crafted illusions in the ancient temples of the mortals on their day out together. The starlight display was a good and efficient use of the materials he had to work with there in the Underworld. He had to admit that the result was quite striking.

"Well? Do you like it?" he asked.

"It amazing!" she said still looking up. It was the first real unguarded statement of unqualified delight he'd heard from her.

"I'm glad it pleases you," Trowa said sincerely. Midii winced distractedly at the light show scene as Trowa's steed Mortis bashed a daemon's head in with his hoof just as Trowa lopped off three deamon's appendages with a single swing of his blade. Trowa surreptitiously changed the view, recalling how the visions of death and torment in the mortal realm had disturbed her.

"It does and… thank-you," she said softly. Trowa blinked a little in surprise then said

"It was my pleasure. Anything I can do to make you happy makes me happy."

"That's sweet of you," she said. "Would you mind if I sat down? The ride from Romafeller was a little tiring but what wore me out the most was Lady carrying on. You'd think she'd been planning my funeral not just sending me off to another realm."

"Well," Trowa said, smiling a little in an attempt at humor. "Most people who send their loved ones to the Underworld are indeed planning their funeral."

To his delight Midii laughed, bringing a delicate hand up to hide her giggle. Trowa spread his cloak out on the ground for her silently sending a Shadowed One to the mortal realms for food. He didn't want to press his luck when she was in such a rare good mood by asking her to eat of the food of the dead and thus agree to stay with him. For now it was enough that she seemed to be more inclined to accept his company than she usually was.

"How was your visit?" Trowa asked conversationally. Usually Midii volunteered nothing of herself but she seemed more inclined to be agreeable this afternoon.

"It went well enough," Midii said to Trowa's secret surprise and delight. "Lady Une…"

And he cored a pear for her and sliced it into sections while he listened to her chatter on about her Lady's imminent hostile take-over, her best friend Hilde's crisies with trying to train another of Lady Une's handmaidens to take Midii's place and other minutae about her life in Romafeller.

"…and I met your sister by the way," she said after a time. That caught his surprise and attention.

"Cathy?" he questioned. "When did you meet her?"

"She came to visit me in Romafeller," Midii said. "At first I thought you had sent her, but then I realized that she was just being protective of you."

"How so? What did she say?" Trowa asked curiously.

"That's a secret between us girls," Midii said maddeningly.

"You won't tell me?" Trowa asked. "Why not?"

"So what did you do here while I was away?" Midii asked, completely changing the subject. It was clear by the impish look on her face that she was enjoying Trowa's distraction. Trowa sighed, giving up, and went on to describe that he had mostly slept the empty hours away and worked in the mortal realm doing his duty.

"Well, I can see I was right to be concerned," Midii muttered.

"You were concerned about me?" he asked, pouncing on it. Midii got that look on her face that said she'd been caught out on something she didn't want to admit to.

"A little," she relented after a lengthy pause. "Very little mind you."

"But still; you were concerned about me," Trowa said, with a small smile of his own.

"Don't give me that look," she grumbled.

"What look?" he said innocently "There's no look."

"There's a look," Midii argued gamely. "And you're definitely wearing it."

"I'm not wearing any look," he maintained. "Who are you going to believe, me or my face?"

Midii tried to look sternly at him but after a moment gave up and laughed. Trowa wasn't sure what made her so amused, but hey, if she was happy that was all that mattered to him. He could sit there and bask in her smile all night. After a few minutes Midii began to uncoil her hair from its traveling coif, unlacing the jewels and displacing the pins. Soon her hair was a wavy waterfall of a thousand different shades of gold from palest moonlight to dark clover honey cascading down her back and pooling a little on the cloak they lay out on.

"May I?" he asked hestitantly. The Shadowed One brought a brush from the set he'd ordered for her. Midii looked sidelong at him out of the corner of her eye but after a moments hesitation repositioned herself so that her back was facing closely to him. Awkwardly, because he'd never done this before, Trowa took long gentle swipes at the silken curtain.

"Tell me about you and your sister," Midii said into the silence that followed. "You two seem so different but it's obvious that she cares a great deal about you so you must be close."

"We are," Trowa said absently as he carefully worked out a tangle. Midii tilted her head back as he brushed her hair and he didn't realize that some of his memories began to play out on the sky while he wasn't paying attention.

"She's my older sister by a few hundred years. She comes from a time before the Daemon Wars where she was worshipped as a goddess of joy just as she is now. I was Born during the time when the Daemons ravaged the world and all of the realms so we spent the first few years of the wars separated. The preist who sacrificed himself so that I could be Born into flesh was kin to one of Cathy's temple guardians and that's how we were reunited. I went off to fight in the wars and she stayed safe to guard the humans. She's not a battle-goddess and I wouldn't ask her to assume such a role, but I've been a soldier since the day I was Born so it's natural that I would be the one to fight."

"I come from a small line of fairly weak nature deities," Midii said in reply. "My brothers were ill equipped to hide or protect themselves during the wars…"

"I didn't know you were in creation at that time," Trowa said, surprised. "I thought that you had spent all of your existence sheltered within Romafeller."

"My…" Midii trailed off. Trowa could sense that she was on the cusp of sharing something with him, something very difficult or painful for her. He could tell by the way her shoulders haunched and she seemed to draw inside herself, curling up into a little ball before him.

"Midii? What is it?" he asked, gently laying a hand on her shoulder to draw her near. She flinched a little so he subsided and let her tell what she would say in her own time.

"You've been a soldier all your life," Midii said instead. "So surely you've seen firsthand how dreadful the effects of the wars were on everything within the mortal realms and beyond."

"I have seen it," Trowa acknowledged.

"You must have seen some pretty terrible acts of desperation in your time then," she continued.

"Some," he said, uncertain where this was going. "The daemons were a terrible force, like a plague of locusts they cut down and devoured everything that they came into contact with."

"Yes, they did," Midii said sadly.

Trowa slowly, carefully, positioned himself curled around her side so that he could face her. He gently brushed her cheek with his hand and could see in her face the lingering shadows of a victim haunted by the terrible aspects of war. That single act of kindness seemed to be her undoing for she flung herself at him knocking both of them supine upon his cloak as she buried her face in his shoulder. Not knowing what else to do Trowa simply wrapped his arms around her once more and held her. She wasn;t crying this time, instead she shook uncontrollably. Trowa awkwardly made soothing noises and stroked her hair as though she was some kind of odd cat. Her voice tremored as she said

"It not exactly common knowledge, but like the Lady herself, all of Lady Une's handmaidens; even the fairly useless ones, have a darker side to their nature. We were all there at the fall of the first age of mankind. We were there when the great war consumed the world, sundering the stars and the sky. I was there."

"You fought in the war?" Trowa said, surprised.

"I had no real choice in the matter," Midii said. "It was fight or let my family be consumed by the Daemons."

"So it was for all of us," Trowa said. "The forces of light were powerful, but greatly lesser in number than the Daemons were. We needed every available hand; even the weakest of elementals were forced to serve on the battlefield. So you were one of Lady Une's twelve battle-maidens? The Valakai?"

"Yes," Midii said reluctantly. "I joined so that my brothers would hopefully not have to see battle. They were still very very young then; being young and weak in power would mean they would likely be fodder for the daemons."

"You must love your brothers very much in order to do something you plainly find abhorrent," Trowa said.

"I have not seen them since they were all but babes," Midii said. "But yes, the urge to protect my home and family is strong in me. However, battle is against my nature. The war took something from me that I've never found again. I don't know what I lost but I feel its absence all the same. I never want to see another battlefield full of death and killing as long as I live."

"It is my will that you will never have to," Trowa said. "As long as I'm alive I will protect you."

Midii smiled tremulously up at him and seemed to be content to simply stay where she was and let him hold her. Trowa was more than happy to let her. He didn't question his good luck, a soldier enjoyed the victory and peace while it lasted so that he would have something to look back on when he faced the long dark battlefield. The soft warm feel of her weight in his arms was something he would cherish while he could and let come what may. He lay there with her, utterly content while the sky above them shifted in idle soothing patterns reflecting his contentment.

Midii awoke in the now-familiar surroundings of the lavish bedchamber in the Underworld feeling completely alert and refreshed, even energetic. She wasn't filled with dread or woe for being back in the clutches of the God of the Underworld, quite the opposite in fact. Somehow, last night she'd reached an odd and important decision. She wasn't sure how or when it had happened; she had just been drifting off listening to the steady sound of his breathing and absently thinking that she never felt so safe and cherished before when that thought seemed to vaguely lead into the idea that staying there just like this was very nice and that she wouldn't mind more of it. It hadn't been a shocking realization; she'd been feeling so relaxed and comfortable that nothing could have shocked her then. She wasn't shocked this morning either and why should she be? Under that grim exterior Trowa was truly a kind man and surprisingly easy to talk to. She'd confided in him last evening things she hadn't told anyone else; not her Lady, not even her best friend.

She rose for a long morning bath and then let her attendant Shadowed Ones dress her in the clothes she picked out, then decided to let them get away with brushing and coiffing her hair for her this morning. She surveyed the results in the mirror and pronounced herself satisfied; she'd gone through the extra effort this morning not for herself or her own vanity but so that Trowa would appreciate it. Still, she had several hours left until the time he would return from his duties in the mortal realm and nothing really to fill them with. She was too restless to read and she'd already explored every room in the estate, except his, of course. Great, he'd made her mistress of a manor that ran itself. There had to be something she could do around this place.

Midii wandered aimlessly out into the garden again and was caught again by the wonder of the place; nothing like this existed anywhere in Romafeller! Flowers that gave off light of their own, climbing vines with blooms that glowed in the dimness like pale moonbeams woven into blossoms, stars that formed themselves into moving pictures and patterns. She would stay there and watch them for a while, but watching it alone wasn't much fun for her. If Trowa were here…

Midii snapped her fingers, coming up with an idea.

"Shadowed One," she summoned. "Find me a table, a low-lying one and bring it out here into the garden. Then once you're done with that I want you to convert one of the rooms inside the estate into a kitchen for me, the finest to be made please, and then after that bring me all of the following foods from the mortal realm…" and she went on to list a string of ingredients in a few of her favorite dishes that she specialized in.

Midii was a closet gourmet; no handmaiden of the exquisite Lady Une would ever be caught doing something so lowly as cooking so she'd not had much of an opportunity in the last several hundred years to resharpen her culinary skills, but back when she'd still been living with her family Midii had been quite a deft hand at the delicate art of food preparation. To while away the small amount of time it took for the Shadowed Ones to do her bidding Midii made a flower arrangement for the table that appeared moments after her request for one. A few minutes after that three Shadowed Ones appeared and hovered nearby, signaling that their tasks were done.

Midii looked down at herself, cooking while wearing finery was not a good idea. She sighed and decided that she would change now and then bathe and re-dress herself later. She walked back to her quarters and changed into a plainer stola, took down all of the jewels from her hair (so that they wouldn't accidentally fall into the food) and simply braided her hair back. She followed the Shadowed Ones to where her new kitchen lay and gasped in delight when she saw it. There was the usual fire place that all kitchens had but in addition to the fire place was a clever device that would hold little fires that could be adjusted by turning a knob underneath iron grills sturdy enough to hold heavy pots and pans! What an ingeneous device! In addition to that were two stoves stacked on top of one another with little windows in tinted black glass for her to look inside, and there was a little lighted display of numbers that told her how hot the oven got! And one of the Shadowed Ones showed her to a box rimmed with ice that kept all of her fresh ingredients cold, what a wonder! Of course there was a sink (with hot and cold running water) and lots of black marble counter space, and above her head a rack with cast iron skillets and copper pots and pans. All in all, Midii foresaw herself being a very happy little gourmet cook.

"Well, you certainly do work quickly," Midii said to the three shadowed forms hovering near her shoulder. As usual they gave no reply but Midii felt as though they might have hovered there a little more happily for her compliment. Midii got started with the slicing and dicing of certain ingredients in preparation for the meal she planned for that evening. Fresh baked salmon with a garnish of basil, lemon and olive oil. Rosemary bread, stuffed mushrooms, fresh greens and blended iced fruit with mint.

"When I said fresh they really took me literally," Midii muttered as she looked into the sink and found her salmon waiting for her… still swimming. Well, at least she knew the ingredients were very, _very_ fresh! Midii shrugged her shoulders and caught the fish up by the gills for a quick kill.

Trowa was very happy that she was back. He felt like a man who'd been traveling in the desert for days and had finally found an oasis. She hadn't even seemed angry with him the eveing before; she'd let him hold her when before she'd barely even tolerated his slightest touch. It even seemed like she trusted him, after he'd told her about his life she'd confided in him. Sharing of himself had not been easy for him but Cathy had been right when she had said that it was the only way. It appeared that his gesture of trust had inspired her to trust him.

There was only one thing that impinged on his feeling of contentment; in the mortal realm he had been seeing odd signs lately. Trowa was busier that normal, the pull of a "special case" death had been stronger and more frequent over the past two weeks. Mortals had been dying in an odd way, an odd way that he recognized. Humans had been, for lack of any other better term, sucked dry. He had been to four different sites in four very separate lands and the deaths had all been the same. Through long familiarity with all the different kinds of death there were and the odd presences they left behind Trowa could easily rule out disease, famine, and some new contrivance for murder. These deaths were not natural, that he could feel very clearly. He _knew_ where he had seen this kind of death before and nothing that existed in nature mimicked it.

Daemons. They were the only creatures in existence that sucked out the human soul and left the body intact. The odd thing that marked a Daemon kill from any other sort of death was that the corpse felt wrong-dead, truly dead. Trowa, as the God of the Underworld was acutely sensitive to all of death's nuances and he remembered well the odd feeling of a Daemon kill, the husks were left without even the lingering presence that marked all that had once been living and had passed on. They were as dead as a stone.

Trowa did not want to believe the evidence of his senses; he and the other gods had defeated the Daemons hundreds of years ago! How could the creatures possibly be out and killing again? The things had been exterminated, wiped out. He had called in Treize for a second opinion this afternoon when the body count had reached the equivalent of an entire village. It appeared that what should not be, had taken place. Some how, some way, the Daemons had returned.

"This is grave conjecture you bring me Lord of Death's Realm," Treize said gravely as he slowed his chariot nearby. His Lady, thankfully, was not in attendance; she still had a chip on her shoulder regarding him and his custody of her handmaiden.

"But I know well that you would not lay such a suspicion without full confirming your charge for yourself," Treize continued.

"A second opinion could not hurt, and I am hoping you will tell me I am wrong."

"We both know you're at the stage where that's unlikely."

"…" Trowa was grimly silent while Treize called upon his gifts to corroborate Trowa's reading to the situation. Trowa knew already that the work could only have belonged to the Daemons, only those dark beings were capable of killing and devouring in such a way that the mortals spirit never joined the rest of the dead in the river and never appeared in the Whisper Gallery after passing through the Shadowed Gate.

"Daemons alright," Treize said grimly. "I will release the Hounds on the trail at once, the source of these creatures must be found and destroyed before they can grow stronger."

"I was afraid you would say that," Trowa said with resignation. "I suppose then, that I should stay here in the mortal realm and continue to look for clues."

"It is unnecessary for you to do that. You no longer have only yourself to consider anymore remember. You have Midii in your realm for better or worse and my Lady would not forgive me if I bade you leave her there alone for a protracted period," Trieze replied. "No, let my hounds catch the scent and we shall see where the trail leads."

Trowa nodded once, hiding his relief. The reemergence of the Daemons was a grave matter and one that would surely weigh upon his mind, but he knew that he would be distracted by worrying about Midii alone in his realm. She would be safe but not happy and he had been making such encouraging progress.

The kitchen had smelled heavenly that afternoon _and_ it had kept her busy. There was just something so very comforting and homey about the smell of cooking food to her, the scent of a perfectly prepared meal made her mind wander back to times when she had cooked for her family in their tiny pocket-realm. The aroma's wafting about her had made the dreary underworld almost begin to feel like home. Perhaps it was only her senses playing tricks on her; scent was the sense most closely associated with memory after all and the scent of cooking food was something she'd loved as a child (mainly because it meant they all had food to eat that evening) and so there was that association with it. But maybe, just maybe, the commonplace and comforting activity had made her feel more comfortable in this realm.

By her estimates she had just enough time to grab a quick bath and dress herself before Trowa arrived back in his realm.

Indeed, she had just finished pinning her coif and was headed down to check on how the Shadowed Ones had arranged her meal when she heard the ringing hoofbeats of Mortis in the distance. She hurriedly put the last finishing touches on the arrangement, lit the candles, and hastened to the great hall to meet him. Trowa's face brightened when he saw her, quietly of course, but that soft look was still in his eyes when he noticed her there.

"Welcome back," said, taking his arm. "You have a bath waiting for you, but hurry with it for I don't want dinner to get cold."

"Dinner?" he asked, surprised.

Midii nodded, pleased with herself.

"I ordered the Shadowed Ones to bring the ingredients from the mortal realm and I prepared it for you myself," she told him, enjoying the speechless look on his face. "Now hurry and go clean up."

It didn't take him long to "clean himself up." Midii had ordered the Shadowed Ones to lay out clothing of her choosing for she didn't really feel Trowa could be trusted to choose wisely for himself; he dressed in battle armor at all times, even when he was reading! She was beginning to wonder if he knew how to wear anything else. He cut a striking figure in the deep (almost black) pine green silk shirt and black velvet trews she'd picked out for him. His lean physique and warriors build were still very much in evidence but he now no longer looked like he was going to march off to battle at any moment. In fact he looked rather relaxed.

He sank down into the cushion she'd arranged across from her with a small smile, they picked up their utensils and the meal began.

"I didn't know you cooked," he said his mellow voice overriding the soft string music she'd had piped into the garden for dinner.

"It's an odd skill and not one that saw much practice in Lady Une's service, but nonetheless it is a hobby that I enjoy," she replied.

"Well you're very good at it, I've never enjoyed a meal more. Much of it might be the company however."

Midii smiled at the compliment. She liked being praised for her efforts and it was a good meal despite her being out of practice.

"Where is my armor?" he asked curiously. "I was surprised to find that the Shadowed Ones had this laid out for me. I wasn't aware I owned something like this."

"You didn't," she replied. "At least not until now that is. Your armor is safely stowed away in that rack of yours where it will remain as long as you are off-duty. I got you some clothes to be comfortable in. You _do_ know what the word comfortable means don't you?"

"Yes," he said dryly. "I am comfortable in the armor."

"You only say that because you don't know any better," Midii replied.

Trowa couldn't seem to find a reply for that so he wisely left it alone. Smart man.

"How was your day?" she asked as a conversational gambit (and because she couldn't think of anything else to talk about).

"Lets talk about something else," Trowa said a little dryly.

"That bad eh?"

"Well, no… it's just…"

Midii thought she was getting good enough at reading him to see when he refrained from mentioning something because he thought the subject would bother her. He was the lord of deaths realm, he probably thought most things would bother her.

"Hey…" Midii reached across the table for his hand. "It's okay. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but you don't have to shelter me either. You can talk with me and I won't judge you for the things you have to do. I understand now."

Trowa looked up at her for a long silent moment, then rubbed his thumb along the outside of her hand. Midii's stomach did that fluttering thing and her cheeks flushed of their own accord. He seemed to find that somewhat entertaining for he did it again with a small smile on his face and Midii collapsed into a full-on embarrassed blush. She snatched her hand back, smiling, and said

"Eat your salad you."

"The salad is good," he said. "But I'm in the mood for something more lively." The look he pinned her with let her know with no uncertainties that he was thinking about her. Midii's blush deepened more yet into a hot painful red and her belly did that fluttering thing again.

He backed off after that and kept the topic on lighter matters and when the meal was concluded the Shadowed Ones whisked everything away, table and all. Midii prompted the Shadowed Ones to arrange the cushions for them to lean back on and to Trowa's undisguised surprise and delight she opted to rest her back against his chest and lay her head on his shoulder. Midii felt surprisingly comfortable this way, that strange lethargic sense of peace she'd had the evening before stole back over her, making her drowsy with contentment again.

"What are you thinking of?" Midii asked quietly.

"I'm wondering what prompted this sudden change in direction," Trowa said baldly. Obviously the man didn't know that he was supposed to be whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

"Before you went home to Romafeller," he continued to Midii's dismayed amusement. "I couldn't get you to come near me without bait and a net, but since you have been back this is twice you have settled into my arms without me dragging you there, and you've cooked me dinner."

"Well if you don't like it all you had to do was say so," she teased.

"It's not that I don't like it," he protested immediately (he'd probably taken her literally). "I'm just wondering what the cause is."

"Does there have to be a reason?" Midii asked him. Trowa was one of those types who saw the world in black and white.

"There usually is," he replied. "Though granted, people as a general rule can be pretty unreasonable."

"Well I'm sorry to disappoint you but I don't have an answer for you. There is no reason, other than that I want to," Midii said.

"So you simply decided that you _want_ to spend the day cooking me dinner?"

"It gave me something to do, and cooking for only yourself is not fun," Midii replied casually. Glancing sidelong out of the corner of her eye at him. He looked disappointed by her answer so she took one of his hands in hers and interlaced their fingers.

"And you want to pick out my clothes for me?" he continued.

"You are a terrible dresser," Midii informed him. "I'm sure it's a crime somewhere that you only wear battle-armor all of the time, even on your hours off."

"And you want to lay here on the ground in this garden… here in my arms?" he sounded hesitant. Well, it was an important question and what would happen between the two of them hinged on her answer. Midii's heart was pounding as she replied

"Can you think of a better place for me to rest?"

"No," he said softly giving her a small squeeze. "This place is perfect for you."

"I'm glad you think so," Midii said. She closed her eyes and let herself drift peacefully again.

"I love you Midii," he whispered softly into her hair. She reached up to stroke his cheek softly.

"I'm glad," Midii said. She couldn't quite confess reciprocal feelings yet; for her they were just beginning to grow and they weren't strong enough to be called love, so that was the best she could manage. To her relief it seemed to be enough for him.

In all of his millennia as the God of the Underworld Trowa couldn't ever recall being this content with his life. Every evening when he came home he got to look at her beautiful face smiling up at him (and he'd found to his surprise that she was right; regular clothing was far more comfortable than armor). They spent every evening together; sometimes over dinner that she had prepared, sometimes over a game of Strategem, sometimes they'd sit and watch a mortal play enacted out on the sky. Yesterday evening she'd curled up to him while he read to her from a book of histories and had fallen asleep in his arms. He hadn't wanted the night to end.

But end it had, and this morning he was faced with the sight of a village razed to the ground. The sad rows of houses were now nothing more than walls crumbled to their foundations and straw roofs collapsed in and still burning hotly. The acrid scent of smoke permeated the air but that was no more or less than he was accustomed to. What truly disturbed him were the bodies littering the streets. He had been to his share of plague-villages in his tenure as Lord of Death's Realm but they had not once truly afflicted him with this all-pervading sense of wrongness. The wrongness came from the fact that the bodies that littered the ground were freshly dead but had no lingering sense of Presence to them. Even after a soul had been released to the river there was still a persistent connection to the earthly body that hovered around for a few days; necromancers used it to get into contact with the spirit in order to re-animate a corpse. Usually they used this to question a recently dead person about a matter pertaining to their will or about a murder or other matters in which the recently passed was the only one who could settle matters (and not to raise an army of the undead as Trowa had once seen enacted in a torrid play in the mortal realm).

Daemons; and they were getting stronger and bolder. The enemy that they all thought they had defeated for good was somehow, impossibly, back again. But where had they come from? Trowa had what Shadowed Ones he could spare out hunting for the source of the Daemons along with Trieze's Hounds but thus far none had had any luck. It was an enigma Trowa liked not at all. He would have preferred to turn his thought to lighter things, like his beloved Midii, but duty required his absolute attention.

Trowa resignedly began to weed through the piles of bodies, searching for any one of them that had been an accidental death and thus usable for his purposes. It shouldn't be very hard; the bodies of the ones who had been killed by Daemons were easily recognizable from any form of plague and mutilation; the cadavers were sort of crispy dried husks, rather like a dried beetle carcass. They felt Dead ( with a capital D) even to Trowa who held dominion over the realm of the dead and administered all matters pertaining to his realm. There was no lingering presence here, no connection to his realm for his powers to draw upon; it was that very void of nothingness that disturbed him.

There had been no word from Treize regarding any leads on the source of the Daemon's re-emergence; Trowa really hadn't been expecting any. Thought Treize's Hounds were the best in all of creation Daemons were tough to track even for those legendary beasts. It would be a while yet before the scent was caught and the true hunt began. Trowa might be able to speed the search up by finding a clue. If he could find a mortal among all of these Daemon kills that had died by unlucky accident in the pandemonium of the attack he could summon its spirit back to question it.

Ah! he thought triumphantly. A Shadowed One lifted the fleshy (stiff and only just starting to go off) corpse out of the piles of dried beetle-carcass-like husks and Trowa summoned his power. It felt a little like releasing a soul to the river only in reverse. Trowa used his Power to gather the last lingering bits of Presence hanging about the body and twist them into a thread. He gave the twine a little tug and the spirit at the other end came drifting towards him at his command.

She'd been there for about two weeks and every night they had done something together; last night he had read to her from a book of history. It had been nice, laying out under the shifting sky with her head pillowed on his chest reading along with him. After a while she had simply closed her eyes and listened to his voice; he had a nice voice, soothing and mellow; at first she had thought it devoid of all traces of emotion but as she had listened to it last night she'd realized that the inflections and tones were just more subtle.

Cathy was right; she really hadn't lost anything by letting go of her enmity and letting herself like him. In fact she'd gained a very good companion. He was pretty quiet and he seemed clueless about the most basic of things that she took for granted; like the time she had spent the better part of an hour explaining that the fellow in the play they had been watching had not literally meant "catching a girl," Trowa had questioned her as to whether she would appreciate his use of a snare and animal entrails. It had been funny in a sweet kind of way. Trowa was so grim and cool all of the time, it made her feel special that she got to see a side of him that no-one else got to. That he loved her was obvious, and over the past several days she'd truly warmed up to him. She knew she could rely on him, and his statement that he would protect her still made her heart flutter when she thought about it. It wasn't so wrong, the sky hadn't caved in on her because she'd allowed herself to enjoy something outside of her duties; the world hadn't ended because she'd permitted her feelings to grow into something a little more meaningful. Maybe...

Midii allowed herself an optimistic thought. Maybe it was okay. Maybe she could let herself really fall in love with him.

And maybe not, she reminded herself. It was nothing against Trowa, but she was still very worried about her Lady's reprisal. Midii had agreed to join the Valakai during the wars in exchange for Lady Une's protection of her family. Midii didn't fear that her Lady would cease to protect her family even though Midii was no longer her handmaiden after Trowa had kidnapped her, nor did Midii fear that Lady would take her revenge on Midii's family; Midii feared what would happen to Trowa if it became clear to Lady that her faithful handmaiden had found new priorities. Lady Une could be very jealous at times especially where something she considered as well and truly hers was concerned. Trowa was already on her list because of the kidnapping, the only reason that Lady Une's reprisal against Trowa had been held off for so long was that Midii was here against her own will and thus essentially a hostage. If Midii made a conscious decision to stay with Trowa she'd be turning her back on her Lady. Midii worried about the after-effects that Trowa might face with Lady.

The problem was that Trowa was so easy to love now that Midii had stopped giving him the cold shoulder. If she really let herself fall for him she'd have to make a choice; a choice between the obligations she had assumed to protect her family and the calling of her own heart. If she fell in love with Trowa now it would only mean heartbreak for her later when she had to leave him.

"Midii?" she heard his voice call softly from the entrance to the garden. She was dismayed to note that her heart skipped a beat at the sound. She rose and turned to him; he stood tall there in the doorway his cloak settling about him from a sudden movement. His shoulders were broad and she found herself drawn half against her will to climb into his embrace so that she could rest her head against them and feel safe. She loved how his deep chuckle rumbled in his chest and how his arms held her so gently and she loved his fresh masculine scent and she loved…

Him, she realized with weary dismay. It couldn't be so, it shouldn't be so, but it was. It had happened a lot faster than she had thought it might and it wasn't fair. How could she turn her back on her Lady? How could she selfishly love him when he would be the one to pay the price?

He lay out in the garden with her head pillowed on his chest as her worried thoughts chased each other around in her head.

"You're very quiet this evening," he noted after a time. "Is something wrong?"

"Trowa," Midii said after a moment's hesitation. "When you said that you would defy Romafeller itself to have me here… did you mean it?"

He maneuvered his head to look down at her and said

"Yes."

"So even if Lady Une threatened you or something, you'd still do what you want?" she pursued.

"Lady Une has already threatened me," Trowa replied. "But she knows that I hold dominion here and she cannot enter to bring you out without my permission."

"So you're not afraid of her? You're not afraid of any reprisals she might make?"

"It will be a battle worth fighting, in my opinion," he said. "Provided of course that it comes to that; I fully believe that there is a good chance that she'll cool off and come around to seeing things my way. Or if not that, then she may just bow to the inevitable and allow me my victory."

"I think you're being overly optimistic about that last one," Midii informed him. "There's nothing that can stand in Lady Une's way when she wants something."

"Is that what has you so worried?" he asked perceptively. Trowa rarely missed anything.

"Sort of," Midii replied. "How long can I be down here and not have to worry that Lady Une will grow fed up with waiting on something you have no intention of doing in the first place and simply strike at you?"

"It won't matter," Trowa said reassuringly. "All that matters to me is how you feel about it."

He seemed to be waiting for something, impishly Midii was silent to drag out the moment and make him ask.

"Midii?"

"Yes Trowa?" she asked, innocence itself. She sat up to arrange her hair artfully over one shoulder, seeking to display herself best in the star-pale light. She casually let her wrap drip down off one shoulder to call attention to her willowy form. He seemed properly attentive at least.

"How _do_ you feel about remaining here with me?" he asked.

"You mean forever?" she widened her eyes and formed her lips into a soft, sweet moue.

"Yes."

"Well… I haven't been here all that long, it's a little soon to talk about forever don't you think?"

"Oh," he said, sounding disappointed. He sat up as if in preparation to go when, she restrained him with a soft touch.

"I can tell you that I like being here with you now, and that I want to be here with you tomorrow, and likely the day after that," she offered.

He seemed to consider that for a moment, losing all impulse to leave her, then raked a glance over her out of the corner of one eye that made her tummy turn over on itself and her heart beat faster. They were facing each other, resting back on arms and elbows in order to speak to one another and she suddenly felt very aware and very vulnerable under that sharp green gaze of his.

"Considering that you seem to have made plans to remain for the near future at least, perhaps it wouldn't be untoward of me to ask for something that I've been wanting from you for a considerable amount of time now."

"And what is that?" Midii asked gamely. Her chest tightened just a little at the look in his eyes and she felt an anticipatory shiver curl up her spine. She was captivated by the way the strange pale light in the gardens deepened his incredible eyes.

"I want a kiss," he said softly. His words themselves seemed to caress her, and all she could do was nod mutely. She couldn't seem to move, or breathe, or think. His scent, subtle and masculine seemed to work an insane chemistry on her body, possessing all of her senses as he drew nearer. The backs of her knees, folded neatly beneath her pooled skirts, tingled in innate awareness.

"Was that a yes?" he carefully slid his arms around her. His strong hands slid over the loose silken folds of her stola, disarranging the careful balance of the garment and causing one shoulder to drop halfway down her arm. He wasn't wearing his armored breastplate but his chest was hardened muscle all the same, Midii's hands were pressed against it as his arms slid around her waist. She didn't feel at all trapped by his firm steel arms this time, she felt safe and loved.

"Yes," she whispered, mingling their breaths as he slowly, carefully and ever so gently lowered his lips to hers. She was surrounded by him and all she knew of the world or needed to know was the gentle contact of his lips. His scent was the air she breathed, his taste the sweetest taste in creation, the muscles of his chest hard and soft like silk-wrapped velvet was all she could feel and the only sound she heard was their breaths and their heartbeats mingling as one. Instinctively she reached out with her power to touch her spirit to his so that she could know him on the final level but he abruptly pulled back. She followed him, eagerly seeking the blissful feeling she had known a moment ago and sliding her arms from where they were tucked against his chest between their bodies up around his neck to draw them closer.

A heartbeat later his lips joined hers again more firmly, a bit more hungrily; his arms tightened around her just a bit and she could feel tremors of fine control ripple through his muscles. His lips firmed against hers for a brief instant before he abruptly jerked away once more. Midii looked at him with confusion in her eyes.

"I want this too much," he murmured, softly stroking her cheek. The familiar love and adoration were back in his eyes and she smiled softly up at him as she tightened her arms and brought her face up to his to kiss _him_ this time. She could feel his struggle with control in the fine tremors in his muscles; inexperienced, she didn't know what it cost him to hold himself back.

This time his lips crushed hers not gently and he seemed to taste of her hungrily. Without breaking contact with her Trowa shifted his arms to lay them completely supine. His body pressed her backwards as his arms held her to him and she was soon pressed between his lean frame and the firmament beneath them. His mouth massaged over hers and she instinctively parted her lips; it was like she was breathing inside of him! She didn't fully understand how she was suddenly enveloped in warm swirling splendor, but she didn't want those blissful feelings to ever end. She gasped a little when his hand, formerly occupied by holding her tightly, slid slowly down her bare arm and over her silk-clad hip. It had felt like lightening had skittered over her skin, she felt alive and tingling at his soft touch. Midii responded by squirming closer to him.

Trowa abruptly pulled back, breaking off the kiss with shocking suddenness and leaving Midii seeking for more. He tried to pull away completely but Midii tightened her arms, not wishing to loose his warmth and contact.

"Midii…" he said softly, gently unwrapping her arms from about him. "Midii…"

Still a little dizzy from the sensations Midii could only stare adoringly at him. "Hm?" she asked, nudging herself a little closer.

"Midii we have to stop," he said. He was obviously trying to sound firm but she heard the note in his voice that said that stopping wasn't really what he wanted to do.

"Why?" she asked, trying to snuggle up against him as she had been doing. It suddenly felt much better to her to be closer to him, her body felt like it was humming softly in resonance to a song she'd never heard before. But for some reason however, he wasn't having it. His hands held her firmly by the shoulder at arms length. Midii pouted a little. Why was he being so difficult about this?

"Because," he said. "I'm afraid of what I might do if we don't stop here."

"But I like your kisses," she said ingenuously.

Trowa, for the first time since she had known him, smiled. It was a nice smile; small and a little shy. It brought an answering one to Midii's face.

"I'm pleased you do," he said. "I promise that you may have more of them. But later."

"Why later?" she pursued, still trying to squirm out of his steady grasp and back into his embrace where his arms could warm her. Midii put her arms back around his neck and tilted her head for another kiss. Instead of kissing her on the lips he softly kissed her forehead.

"Later," he said. "Because I want you too much right now."

He rose and pulled her up, interlacing their fingers as he led her inside. Like a gallant swain he walked her to her very door and kissed her softly before showing her inside. Midii was very tempted to invite him in but reluctantly decided against it. Such an invitation would lead swiftly to a place she didn't think she was ready to go just yet. In what could only be described as a daze of happiness Midii let the Shadowed Ones ready her for bed, her mind still buzzing with blissful peace she closed her eyes and slept.


End file.
